Events

The Centre for Policy Research invites you to a talk on: 

Reimagining Graduate Education in the Social Sciences: What Are We Preparing Students For?

Friday, 3rd July 2026, 3:00 PM IST

Speaker:

Prof. Anant Maringanti, Director, Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC), University of Minnesota

Chair:
Prof. Prem Kumar Kalra, Former Director, Dayalbagh Educational Institute, (Deemed to be University), Dayalbagh, Agra & Former Director, IIT Jodhpur

This event will be held in a hybrid mode at the CPR Conference Room and online via Zoom. Kindly register below to attend.

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About the Talk
Graduate education in the social sciences has, for too long, been organised around stable disciplines, specialist credentials, and professional pathways that often remain confined to seminar rooms. The conceptual landscape of graduate training, howsoever attractive it may appear from within the academe, has rarely been measured on the basis of how faithfully it prepares students for the complex, uncertain, and interconnected problems of lived social reality. Problems such as artificial intelligence, urban repair, climate change, and questions of governance cut across disciplinary boundaries, resist singular vocabularies, and cannot be addressed from within the logic of any one field alone.
This talk asks a simple but urgent question: What are we preparing graduate students for? It argues that without abandoning disciplinary rigour, graduate education must be reimagined to equip students to work across institutions, publics, and countries, and to remain intellectually nimble in the face of problems that do not hold still. This demands impeccable commitment on the part of those who design graduate programmes to translate disciplinary training into forms of enquiry that are collaborative, transnational, and methodologically plural.

About the Speaker
Professor Anant Maringanti currently Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) and MDP Program Co-Chair at the University of Minnesota. He also founded the Hyderabad Urban Lab (HUL), in Hyderabad, India where he led an interdisciplinary team dedicated to tackling complex urban challenges in the Global South, merging theoretical research with practical action, empowering marginalised communities, and influencing urban policy. Beginning as an engineer, he transitioned into industrial design, visual communication, participatory research in Eastern Madhya Pradesh, journalism, and activism before earning a PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota. He remains deeply committed to mentoring the next generation of scholars, and creating pathways for more equitable and sustainable urban futures through HUL and ICGC.

About the Moderator
Professor Prem Kumar Kalra has been the Director of Dayalbagh Educational Institute (Deemed to be University), Agra, and also the founding Director of IIT Jodhpur. He has held senior academic and administrative roles at IIT Kanpur, including Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Dean of Resource Planning and Generation. He holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba, Canada, and has made significant contributions to research in Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks. He has authored five books and over 150 research publications, and was among the principal architects of the 3iNetwork, a consortium of IIT Kanpur, IDFC, and IIM Ahmedabad, established to build intellectual capacity in matters of national policy.