News

What do you get when you combine electrical and computer engineering with soil science? In my case, you get a MITACS Globalink Research Internship.

Through this program, I joined the University of Guelph in June 2022, to work with soil scientist Prof. Asim Biswas. My semester exams at Jadavpur University had just ended, and I was both eager and nervous about my first international journey to the other side of the globe.

Ashna Jassi successfully defended her PhD dissertation, "Caring for Elderly Canadian Punjabis: Understandings and Contributions of Adult Sons and Daughters" on 08 September 2022. She convocated from the Applied Social Psychology program on 11 October 2022. Her PhD dissertation advisory committee included Saba Safdar, Sharada Srinivasan and Paula Barata. Ashna's dissertation included two studies, which add to growing evidence of the involvement of Punjabi adult daughters in caring for their own elderly parents and parents-in-law in Canada.

We are seeking SIX curious, engaged undergraduate students at the University of Guelph to participate in a pilot virtual connection activity with students at Indian universities in 2022–23.

You can register here. The deadline to register is Friday, 30 September 2022.

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From 1842, indentured labourers (including half of my ancestors) were sent to the Caribbean, with large Indian populations moving to Trinidad, Jamaica, and British Guiana. The system endured until 1917. British-made famines were common during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, making indentureship schemes attractive. Certainly, indentureship was better than the slave trade it replaced, but it was grueling all the same.

Bina Agarwal, Professor of Development Economics and Environment, University of Manchester, received an honorary degree from the University of Guelph, and delivered the convocation address on June 14th, 2022. Here's the video of the ceremony and address:

Dilshan Fernando (PhD candidate in Sociology; CIRCLE Student Writer) and Dr. Sharada Srinivasan (Associate Professor; Director CIRCLE) spoke to Vikas Swarup on the occasion of the awarding of the Doctor of Letters, honoris causa by the University of Guelph on 16 June 2022.

Listen to the podcast interview with Vikas Swarup on a wide range of questions.

In many Canadian workplaces, South Asian women are a distinct and thriving minority. But what do their paths to success look like?

They don’t have it easy. Anju Philip, a PhD candidate in the Department of Management at U of G’s Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics says they often navigate complex and arduous parallel cultures.

In the post-pandemic world, international engagement and research collaboration may look quite different than in the past. We’ve learned how easy it can be to communicate with colleagues around the world in real time, without needing to travel. Well-attended international webinars, guest lectures by non-Canadian speakers, and virtual annual lectureships have prevailed.

So, can CIRCLE be a hub for such future research endeavours at Guelph?

Madhur Anand's new collection of poems is out. This book examines various aspects of human life in the epoch of Anthropocene. Anand is a professor in the School of Environmental Sciences and a CIRCLE member. Read more here.

I glanced at the poster hung on the South Indian yoga ashram’s wall, and read to myself the phrase displayed, “what you really need to know is what you want out of this life.”

I laid down on my mat and thought about these words. I found myself in a South Indian ashram in 2016 as part of my ongoing training and education as a certified yoga instructor and registered therapist in Canada, and a result of my own personal journey of healing and growth in my life.