Anthropology and Sociology of Development Professors Shalini Randeria and Isabelle Schulte-Tenckhoff, and Associate Professor Alessandro Monsutti, have been awarded funding for two new research projects by the new Flash Research Programme, managed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne’s (EPFL) Cooperation and Development Center. This new funding allows researchers to quickly react to exceptional events by setting up joint research projects with partners in Brazil and India.
The first, Changes in Border Policy and Border Identities: A Case Study of the Indo-Bangladesh Border Enclaves, is led by Shalini Randeria, in collaboration with Alessandro Monsutti. This one-year project will analyse the impact of India’s sudden May 2015 ratification of the Land Boundary Agreement, which has ended decades of uncertainty along the Indo-Bangladesh border. It will concretely examine the effects of changes in border governance on the lives, livelihoods, patterns of mobility and identities of stateless Hindu and Muslim communities in the ‘enclaves’, who have now been granted Indian or Bangladeshi citizenship.
The second, “In 2015, we are all indigenous”: Indigenism and the World Games of Indigenous Peoples (Palmas, Brazil) will be managed by Isabelle Schulte-Tenckhoff, as well as Sarah Da Silva Telles, PUC-Rio. “In 2015 we are all indigenous” is the motto of the World Games of Indigenous Peoples, to be held for the first time in October 2015, in Palmas, Brazil. The proposed research project aims to explore performances of indigeneity and narratives of mutual identity construction as these unfold during the Games, with the purpose of contributing to a better understanding of the complex relationship between Brazilian society, Brazilian authorities and Indians. The project provides for several collective endeavours, including a workshop in Geneva in May 2016.
Research projects submitted to the Flash Research Programme must focus on and be directly linked to an event. Possible research projects would study effects, impacts and implications of this event that would not be observable otherwise under normal conditions.