Last month, a team of six staff from the Civic Initiative (a business group of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Donahue Institute) were in Islamabad. They held a three-day follow-up conference for alumni from recent cohorts of the Study of the U.S. Institutes Comparative Public Policymaking program that has been held annually by the Civic Initiative since 2010. The SUSI program is funded by the US Department of State Education and Cultural Affairs Office.
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The Pakistan Conference: 75 Years of Independence
Submitted Thursday, May 25th, 2023
The American Institute of Pakistan Studies sponsored “The Pakistan Conference: 75 Years of Independence,” hosted at Harvard University by the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute on November 29th and 30th, 2022. This was the first time that a Harvard department has organized a conference specifically centered on the field of Pakistan studies. This two-day conference had an interdisciplinary focus across all fields relating to Pakistan, with 40 presenters from a global community of scholars. The interdisciplinary focus ensures that the field of Pakistan studies is moving towards a more holistic humanities and social science approach, beyond the traditional security studies that has dominated the field. The keynote speaker was Justice Qazi Faez Isa, the Senior Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and the plenary was given by Dr. Pippa Virdee from the DeMontfort University in the UK. AIPS funds helped sponsor the participation of seven graduate students at the conference, ensuring that early-career scholars could also participate in this conference. The conference organizers are now working with Routledge to publish an edited volume based on select conference papers. Around 80 participants ere in attendance, and this event was made possible by funding from CAORC 2019.
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