A special Talk on 'Sports Anthropology Today: Contemporary Concerns' was delivered by Dr. Anup Adhikari on 20th March 2024, 3 PM in the Seminar Hall

A special lecture on Ethnographic photography was delivered by Juan F. Cuyás, PhD candidate from Departament D'antropologia Social, Universitat De Barcelona, on 7th February 2023, 3:00 PM, Seminar Hall. Chair: Dr. Avitoli G. Zhimo | Coordinated by Kanika Sharan and Taniya Gill (PhD scholars).

A special lecture on Graphic Politics in Eastern India: Script and the Quest for Autonomy was delivered by Nishaant Choksi on 9th March 2022, 3:30 PM, Seminar Hall. Chair: Prof. P.C.Joshi | Coordinated by Dr. Chakraverti Mahajan.

A special lecture on 'Artificial intelligence in cross cultural studies: An ethical input in development process' will be delivered by Prof. S. Sumathi, Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, University of Madras on Wednesday 7th April 2021 at 3:00PM via Zoom online platform.

A panel discussion on ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK AT ZE-MNUI was held on Wednesday 19th February 2020 at 2:00 PM in the Seminar Hall. Chair: Prof. P.C. Joshi, Moderator: Dr. Avitoli G. Zhimo.

Screening of "Untiring Mind" a fim by Dr. Nabakumar Duarya, based on the life of B.S.Guha, the architect of Indian Anthropology, was held on 20th february 2020, at 2:00PM, Seminar Hall. Chair. Dr. R.P.Mitra.

Dr. Ravinder Singh, Head & Associate Professor at IHBAS Hospital delivered a talk on 21st November at 3:30 pm in the Seminar room.

Dr. Shweta Rawat from DRDO delivered a special lecture titled ‘Applied Anthropology: Defence perspective’, on the 24th October 2019 at 3:00 PM

As a part of the Eminent Lecture Series, Dr. T. N. Pandit, former Station Incharge of ASI, Andaman Islands, delivered a lecture titled ‘Tribes of Andaman with special reference to Sentinel Islanders’ on Monday, 21st October 2019 at 3.00 p.m. in the Seminar Room.

Special Lecture on the topic RELATIONAL PERCEPTIONS OF THE PSYCHE: PSYCHOLOGY-HISTORY-ANTHROPOLOGY was delivered by Prof. Youval Rotman, Senior Lecturer, Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University, on 18th October 2019

A special talk by Dr. Asaf Sharabi (Senior Lecturer, School of Behavioral Sciences, Peres Academic Center, Israel) Is it God speaking? Identity and Agency of Deities in the Western Himalaya' held on September 6, 2019, 3 PM, Seminar Hall, Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi.

A special talk by Dr. Luisa Cortesi on "Land and Water in North Bihar: An Ontology" was held on 26th August 2019, at 11:00AM. Click here for full report

EMINENT LECTURE SERIES: Dr. Lalit Kumar, Former Adviser, Planning Commission, and an alumnus of the department delivered a lecture titled ‘Application of Anthropological Knowledge in Studies of Tribal Welfare, Communal Harmony, Civil Society and Sanitation & Hygiene’ on Friday the 12th April 2019.

Dr. Isabelle Lange, Medical Anthropologist, anthropologist working with an interdisciplinary field of global health professionals at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in the UK delivered a lecture on "Using layered ethnographic methods in clinical settings: the precarity of health workers in private maternal facilities in Rajasthan" on 15 November 2018 at 3.00 p.m. in the seminar room of the Department.

  
Bio: Dr. Isabelle Lange is a medical anthropologist working with an interdisciplinary field of global health professionals at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in the UK. Her research interests fall along two main, sometimes overlapping, lines. First is the anthropology of religious and spiritual belief, and understanding identities of faith that influence, in particular, personal senses of meaning, health and well-being.
The second line largely surrounds maternal health in West and East Africa, employing ethnographic methods to investigate: patients’ perceptions of quality of care, hospital environments, quality improvement, care-seeking behaviors, health policy formation and transfer, and knowledge exchange.
Her current research concerns private sector maternal care in India and Uganda, and international communication around policies and guidelines in various consultation processes.

Abstract: Using layered ethnographic methods in clinical settings: The precarity of health workers in private maternal facilities in Rajasthan
As a result of a number of incentive schemes instituted over the last two decades in India, women are now more likely to deliver their babies in medical centres rather than at home. Not only has the public health sector benefited from these initiatives – originally aimed at meeting MDG targets and reducing maternal mortality – the private sector has as well, even though many of these clinics lie outside of the regulation of the State. Using a layered, ethnographic approach focusing on four small non-corporate private maternity hospitals, I turn a critical lens on what it means to work within a self-regulated system and examine the “creation” of a cadre of healthcare workers.

This paper examines how a space of care and business is generated out of the precarious positions of both women and the health workers who depend on employment there. Clinic owners’ staffing strategies centred around hiring unlicensed labour room staff, trained on the job rather than in accredited institutes, who take care of all aspects of patient care, including deliveries. These staff work without rights or recourse, and, in their tenuous positions, are out of the reach of government policies meant to standardize practices surrounding facility childbirth and staff working conditions: few clinics in our sample received any monitoring visits from governmental bodies. Instead, they were involved in programs belonging to a wave of global actors implementing initiatives to work with the private sector in terms of quality of care and service provision standards. These programs operate at the intersections between the realities of clinic owners, professional associations, and central policy debates.

By exploring these narratives, this paper highlights the tensions between the value placed on profit, care and both patient and staff rights in the health sector, and examines how unlicensed health workers are at once marginalized and at the same time in a position of (re)asserting and re-imagining the standard guidelines surrounding maternal health practices of care seeking. Click here for Full report