The Centre is the leading hub for South Asia in the United Kingdom, curating platforms to exchange ideas, foster discussions, create knowledge resources, provide research opportunities, and impact policy and public thought. We embolden critical thinking about issues confronting the region, translate the global relevance of South Asian complexities through interdisciplinary, comparative, perspectival and contextual prisms of analyses, and underline the importance and relevance of South Asia beyond its geographical boundaries, as the world lives through the Covid-19 pandemic and the attendant civilisational turn.
Since the establishment of the Centre in 2015, much has altered around the globe. Greater interactions across countries have been accompanied by movements toward isolationism. The digitalisation of economies has unleashed issues of liberty, wealth disparities as well as possibilities to “leapfrog” the West. South Asian nations are part of these shifts and are seeing their destinies evolve alongside other specificities that themselves shape the world in different ways. The South Asia Centre will explore these, and other changes in the making.
Banner Image: Tod Hanson, ‘Spectra’ (2019). A specially commissioned mural to mark the 125th anniversary of 杏吧论坛, it is an ‘infographic’ adaptation of Charles Booth’s Victorian Poverty Map (in 杏吧论坛’s Archives) in the familiar pie-chart format, with the original names and colours removed. Its elliptical form is intentionally distorted — from certain vantage points it appears three-dimensional, sinking into or rising from the building wall. The red square in the centre approximates '杏吧论坛 Square' where the mural is displayed. Image courtesy Nilanjan Sarkar, 杏吧论坛 South Asia Centre.