In Otto Königsberger's footsteps - encouraging collaboration between cities and universities

The two workshops titled “In Otto Königsberger’s footsteps – encouraging collaboration between cities and universities” in India, supported by the grant from UCL Grand Challenges, have now concluded. The workshops were conducted on 8 and 11 May in Bangalore and Pune respectively and organized by UCL Doctoral Students Rodrigo Caimanque and Deb Misra.

The goal of the workshops was to identify and set an agenda for future research in areas where universities and cities can work together. Submissions with rigorous academic or policy or practitioner works on topics related to ‘urban transformation’ that involve, or have the potential for, close collaboration between universities and cities were invited to present. There were over 40 participants who participated and/or presented their work in both the workshops. The participants comprised of students, faculty and researchers drawn from various disciplines including social sciences, urban planning, technology and architecture. Some of the institutions that were represented were Azim Premji Universities,  Bangalore University, CEPT University, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Pune University, Symbiosis Universities and Tata Institute of Social Sciences. The participants presented and discussed about a variety of topics including migration, sustainable cities, land use & peri-urbanisation and urban local governance.

In addition to the participants, Dr. Harini Nagendra (Professor of Sustainability, Azim Premji University) and Mr. Jayant Krishnan (Chief Operating Officer, National Skill Development Corporation) joined us to address the gathering at Bangalore. Similarly, Dr. A K Nangia (Director, National Chemical Laboratories) and  Dr. Ganesh Natarajan (Executive Chairman and Founder of 5F World, a platform for Skills, Start-ups and Social Ventures in India) joined us in Pune.  The final schedule can be found here.

Many thanks to UCL Grand Challenges for providing the funding support for this event. Here are some photos from the workshops: