Nazia Akhtar, whose research involves the literary history of Hyderabad, talked about — the challenges in digitising people’s personal archives. Nazia’s work on Hyderabadi Urdu women’s literature includes The Deccan Sun, a translation of Zeenath Sajida’s writings. Nazia, who is building an online archive of such texts, said “When I work on a writer’s oeuvre, I find their processes in their notebooks, places where they doodle, letters to friends where they complain that they couldn’t put a certain metaphor together. This is why I am interested in the private papers of writers—things they scribble among grocery lists, backs of calendars, receipts, etc,”. Often, families of deceased writers have huge volumes of unpublished writing, including diaries that they hope someone else can preserve and make accessible for researchers. “In such cases, digital technology appears to be a saviour. But there are questions of how much private details to put out, who can access these, what is our responsibility towards writers or their families, who may not be in a position to negotiate for themselves,”

The AI-powered platform developed with guidance from ANRF helps convert complex research papers into summarised video presentations, customisable in different Indian languages making them accessible to all. What makes the language of Science so arcane? The lament is real if the number of queries on Reddit and other online forums for simplifying research papers is any indication. And it’s not only the general public that wants to know “How to skim through a research paper” and get to the crux of it but also the scientific community at large. In a bid to make Science research accessible to wider audiences, researchers at IIITH with guidance from the ANRF have unveiled an AI tool that can seamlessly translate complex research papers into engaging and concise video presentations. Prof. Ponnurangan Kumaraguru who is leading the efforts from IIITH remarks that the idea of democratising research took shape while brainstorming about how to get across scientific research to the non-scientific community and get them excited enough about the breakthroughs

Jayachandran Surendran’s life is the perfect instance of an engineer-dancer who did not let stereotypes limit him. The doctoral researcher talks about legendary dance gurus and phenomenal leaps of faith that shaped his life work in south Indian dance theory, ethno choreology and Tandava philosophy. A senior dance research scholar and lecturer at IIITH’s Center for Exact Humanities, Jayachandran recently defended his Ph.D on form neutral, style neutral fundamentals of dance. Through his research, he built a pedagogical dance teaching tool called Atam, which is one of the rarest patencies, awarded in India in the arts domain. Renouncing an ascending career graph, with a high paying role in a leading multi-national, he would opt to dedicate himself to the pursuit of dance theory. His supreme sacrifice was rewarded, with tutelage under legendary greats. His passion would bring him to Kalakshetra, South India’s leading dance Institute where he would spend nine years, immersed in studying dance systems and documenting priceless artifacts.