Lunch and Learn Series

In this Lunch and Learn event, Dr. Rinku Lamba will consider certain prominent objections to the possibility of conceiving of an Indian variant of liberalism and offer responses to them.

Dr. Lamba is a Political Theorist at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and visiting fellow at UVic's Centre for Studies in Religion and Society.

This symposium consists of three presentations looking at using traditional tools and new media technology in learning environments and associated socio-cultural changes.  Presenters looked at how natural disasters and technological progress are shaping our educational scenario. Presenters along with the audience reflected and evaluated the functions of social media in building more enduring community by reconnecting with others who share their concerns.

Feng Xu, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Victoria, recently published "Looking for Work in Post-Socialist China: Governance, Active Job Seekers and the New Chinese Labour Market". In this book she explores unemployment as one of the most politically explosive issues in China which gained further prominence as a result of the present global financial crisis. The novelty, urgency, and complexity of Chinese unemployment have compelled the government to experiment with policy initiatives that originate in the West.

Eben Kirksey first went to West Papua, the Indonesian-controlled half of New Guinea, in 1998 as an exchange student. His later study of West Papua's resistance to Indonesian occupiers and the forces of globalization morphed as he discovered that collaboration, rather than resistance, was the primary strategy of this dynamic social movement. Accompanying indigenous activists to Washington, London, and the offices of the oil giant BP, Kirksey saw the revolutionaries' knack for getting inside institutions of power and building coalitions with unlikely allies.