CIRCLE News

Dilshan Fernando successfully defended his PhD dissertation, "Future Life How? Charting the Destigmatization of Disability in Titan, India," on May 6, 2025. He is graduating from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in the International Development Studies Collaborative Specialization. His research was supervised by Dr. Belinda Leach, with Dr. Sharada Srinivasan, former Director of CIRCLE, serving as co-advisor, and Dr. Ellen MacEachen as a committee member.

Dr. Guneet Kaur, a professor at the School of Engineering, University of Guelph, is appointed as CIRCLE’s director for a three-year term, effective May 1, 2025.

International Conference on Democracy and Its Undoing: South Asia and Its Polities

March 20-21, 2025 | Organised by the Department of Political Science, Easwari School of Liberal Arts, SRM University- AP (Andhra Pradesh) | More information here

Dr. Kurt Annen, Professor of Economics at University of Guelph, will be delivering a keynote address titled, "Democracies over time: A global perspective".

Please see the attached file for the conference schedule. 

The first Global Inequality Research Award was awarded to Bina Agarwal, Professor of Development Economics and Environment, University of Manchester, for her work on gender inequalities, environmental governance, feminist environmentalism, and environmental inequalities.

Congratulations to Dr. Elizabeth Finnis for her new appointment as One Health Institute Director. Dr. Finnis is an active CIRCLE Member and Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph. Dr. Finnis succeeds Dr. Cate Dewey, who was appointed in 2019 as the Institute’s founding Director. Dr. Finnis will begin her appointment in May 2025. 

Aysha Iqbal Viswamohan (Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Madras) is the editor of Women in Contemporary Indian Films and Media: Representations and Responses (Routledge India).

Masters Student Research Funding

CIRCLE offers two awards each of up to $2,500 annually.

Eligibility

CIRCLE is seeking two (2) graduate student representatives to join its Steering Committee for a duration of 2 years, with the possibility of renewal for an additional term. The Steering Committee advises and oversees the programmatic aspects of CIRCLE (more details below) and meets once in a term. Being part of the SC requires a commitment of about 3-4 hours in a term involving attending meetings and providing input via emails. Visit our website to learn more about CIRCLE. 

Professor Sharada Srinivasan (Canada Research Chair in Gender, Justice and Development; Department of Sociology & Anthropology) is the editor of Becoming A Young Farmer: Young People’s Pathways Into Farming: Canada, China, India and Indonesia. The book is based on international collaborative research in Canada, China, India and Indonesia, is open access and available now! It is part of the book series "Rethinking Rural" (Palgrave Macmillan).

Professor Karine Gagné (Department of Sociology & Anthropology) is co-author, with S. Chostak, of "Climate change beyond technocracy: citizenship and drought practices in the Indian Himalayas." The paper is published in The Journal of Peasant Studies. 

Article Abstract: