Activist and writer Harsh Mander delivers the inaugural Centre of South Asian Studies Lecture on Public Policy, examining the invisibility of poverty in Indian society.

Dr Almeida introduces the topic of her forthcoming book about Anglo-Indians in Britain and the ways in which the adjusted their identities to fit in with the country in which they found themselves.

Dr Hassan, of the Centre for Equity Studies - Missal, New Delhi, investigates the challenges facing minority groups in South Asia, particularly in the face of majoritarian constructions of national identities. He advocates an increased role for states, working together regionally, in protecting and advancing the rights of religious, ethnic caste and linguistic minority groups.

Professor Ahuja (University of Göttingen) investigates the intense period of industrial unrest that followed the end of the Second World War, unsettling social and economic structures and changing the regime of labour regulation with lasting effects.

In the 1950s a small group of researchers initiated a conversation, fuelled by bouts of intense fieldwork, about land, kinship and social order in rural Sri Lanka. The research was revisited in the 1980s. The third scene in the lecture is contemporary, looking at how the rural has become synonymous with poverty and its pathological consequences – self-harm and suicide, alcohol abuse and violence. What links these scenes, and what will become the subject-matter for this lecture is, in Raymond Williams’ words, “a problem of perspective”.

Dr Iqtidar introduces her work into piety and liberalisation in Islamic thought among migrant populations from the Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

In this seminar, Dr Guha critiques the ‘archaeology of origins’, which is on the rise within South Asia, and considers the practices and visual documents of archaeology as artefacts of history.

Professor Gayer of CNRS/CERI - Sciences Po, Paris, examines cases in which communities in Indian cities overcome tensions to resist communal violence and how different religious communities do, in some cases, co-exist.

Professor Simpson, of the School of Oriental and African Studies, relates the findings of his research project into the changes found in Indian villages one the past 60 years.

The Dr B.H. Farmer Seminar. Professor O'Hanlon examines the letters written in India by women in the eighteenth century, revealing what they can tell us about gender and society.