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Conferences & Consultations

Academic conferences

The academic conferences at the LL exhibitions enable a scientific discourse among scholars and researchers working on pastoral systems in India. For the first time perhaps, experts from various disciplines relating to pastoralism – education, economy, technology, history, anthropology, climate change, livestock breeding and ecology – sat in the same room to share their insights and develop agendas for future research. These conferences are also designed to enable young researchers to present their work to a noted audience.

A three-day conference titled Pastoral Futures in a Changing World was organized on the sidelines of the first LL exhibition at the IGNCA, Delhi in December 2016. 60 practitioners, representatives of national and international organizations, scientific and research community, and masters/ doctoral student researchers congregated in Delhi amidst the sound, colour, flavours of the Exhibition. Recognized researchers in the field of Pastoralism, including Roy Behnke, Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, Caroline Dyer, Ced Hesse, Jayashree Ratnam, Carol Kerve, and Arun Agrawal presented their research during the conference. A detailed report of the conference can be downloaded from here.

The second Living Lightly conference which was hosted at the IISER Campus in Pune in February 2019 brought together young scholars who presented their ongoing research on India’s major pastoral communities from different ecological landscapes. Additionally the conference hosted a round table for young scholars to discuss bottlenecks and issues they face in undertaking their research work.

Senior academics who served as discussants to each of the papers, also met on the sidelines to discuss possible collaborative work. This was a less structured discussion that hoped to take forward deliberations that started in 2016 on potential pathways, mechanisms and agendas for advancing collaborative research within the group.

Several noted researchers and practitioners including Siddhartha Krishnan, Abi Vanak, Anita Sharma, Purnendu Kavoori, Vasant Saberwal, Matthieu Salpeteur and Nitya Ghotge were present at the conference. Detailed report of the conference can be downloaded here.