Given these enormous challenges and the need for a great variety of initiatives at multiple levels to resolve them, the first step is to build a new generation of scholars and practitioners that understand these issues.
One of the key problems in realizing the potential of globalization, in making it fairer and able to tackle the scourge of poverty, is that the approach must be integrated across not only different disciplines but also many regions.
To that end, Azim Premji University and the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) will team up to create a space for an interdisciplinary group of scholars from India and all over the world who are at the advanced stages of their Ph.D. dissertations to collaboratively engage in these issues with each other and with leading academics and practitioners from all over the globe.
In the two-week winter workshop, which will take place from January 7-18, 2013, students will present their dissertation work to each other and to invited scholars. The winter workshop will be led by Professor Joseph Stiglitz from INET and Columbia University. Over the course of the workshop, students will interact with scholars and practitioners in three primary ways:
1. Lecture series: Each day, 2-3 speakers will present their latest research or projects to the small group of students. Past speakers have included Nobel laureates, policy makers from the IMF, the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and the World Bank (including all the recent Chief Economists), and aid agencies. Other speakers included some of the leading development economists, political scientists, and sociologists from around the world. Students whose research interests overlap with our speakers have the opportunity to meet selected lecturers to discuss the students’ work. Several young development scholars stay for a longer period of time to provide them with more extended interactions.
2. Group Meetings: Students will be divided into 3-4 small groups of about 5-7 persons who will work together collaboratively in small, informal groups, which will be facilitated by junior faculty or previous participants in a similar workshop in Manchester. In the first half of the workshop, students will present their dissertation work to be examined by a small group of their peers. In the second half, students will present their dissertation to be critiqued by the larger group as well as scholars.
3. Dinner and lunch debates: These sessions will provide an opportunity for more informal interactions between speakers and students, including an opportunity to explore the interplay between academic disciplines and policy.
Other speakers include:
Ravi Kanbur
Robert Wade
Marissa King
Sanjay Reddy
Jose Antonio Ocampo
Rohini Somanathan
Prabhat Patnaik
Rajiv Sethi
Leonce Ndikumana
Perry Mehrling
Vamsi Vakulabharanam
Gabriella Carolini
Akbar Noman
