Concept India Competences

A course for UCPH staff members with activities in India

25 October 2013

Want to know more about

  • how to engage in successful collaborations with Indian partners?
  • how to deal with the challenges of conducting fieldwork in India, and avoid the most common pitfalls?
  • how to navigate India’s cultural and institutional landscape for the most productive research outcomes?

As part of the UCPH India Action Plan, Asian Dynamics Initiative invites academic and administrative staff at UCPH working with India to participate in the course Concept India Competences.*

Concept India Competences addresses the growing need for research cooperation with India, and offers you a unique opportunity to better understand India and your Indian partners.

Concept India Competences is a one‐day course featuring presentations by experts on India as well as discussions of real everyday‐life situations and issues, with both colleagues and people from outside the university who have extensive experience with India. Topics to be touched upon include Indian culture, customs, society as well as teaching‐ and research environments — on the institutional as well as the practical level.

Date and time: 25 October 2013, approx. 9:00-17:00
Venue: Faculty of Humanities, Room 27.0.49, KUA1, Building 27, Njalsgade 136, 2300 Cph. S

Confirmed speakers:

Kenneth Zysk, Associate Professor of Indology, Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, UCPH

Born in the USA and educated in the USA and Australia, Kenneth Zysk came to Denmark in 1997 to take up the position of Associate Professor in charge of Classical Indian Studies or Indology. He completed his DPhil in Indology at the University of Oslo in 2002 and teaches courses in Sanskrit language and ancient Indian history and culture.

His major research interests focus on the history and development of Indian science, including traditional Indian medicine or Āyurveda and Yoga. He is currently completing a multivolume book on Physiognomy in India, which should be published in 2014. Ken has travelled and conducted research in India over the past 30 years and has extensive experience with India’s academic world and how to work effectively within it.

Ken will be discussing the topic of “how knowledge of history and culture helps to understand modern India. Reflections from 30 years of experience”.

Lars Tore Flåten, Senior lecturer, Dept. of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo

Lars Tore Flåten’s research interests include: Nationalism, Hindu nationalism, identity politics, political conceptions of national history, cultural memory, and political culture in India. Furthermore, he is the author of the SIU report “Høyere utdanning i India: reformer og tendenser.  Konsekvenser for norske universiteter og høgskoler som vil samarbeide med India”.

Lars Tore will give an introduction to higher education in India, reforms and tendencies.

Mie Femø Nielsen, Professor, Dept. of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics, UCPH

Mie Femø’s field of expertise is corporate communication and institutional interaction. She will talk about her very successful course, International Business Communication, where students from different departments of the Faculty of Humanities at UCPH worked on a challenge from Mærsk Line. The course involved data collection in both Copenhagen and Mumbai, analysis, development of solutions and recommendations as well as presentations to Mærsk Line in Copenhagen and Mumbai.

Emilija Zabiliute, PhD Fellow, Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, UCPH
Emilija Zabiliute will share her experiences from doing fieldwork in New Delhi slums.

Sudhanshu Rai, Associate Professor, Dept. of Intercultural Communication and Management, CBS
Sudhanshu Rai has worked extensively on establishing collaboration between CBS and Indian research institutions and will talk about cultural understanding, intercultural communication and collaboration between DK and India.

Lunch, coffee and tea will be provided.

The course is organized by Asian Dynamics Initiative



* In 2012, academic and administrative staff at UCPH working with China were invited to participate in the course Concept China Competences. Concept China Competences was initiated by the Nano‐Science Center in collaboration with China Studies (KU), International Staff Mobility, and researchers from Nano‐Science (KU), Water & Environment (KU) and Sustainable energy (DTU). The project, which was funded by Statens Center for Kompetenceudvikling, turned out very successful with positive
evaluations from participants.