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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Gender Studies Dissertation Workshop
AIPS-HEC Dissertation Writing Workshop (Gender Studies)
Islamabad, January 28–30, 2013
The American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS) in collaboration with the HEC is pleased to invite proposals for a dissertation workshop for doctoral and M. Phil. students in the social sciences who are focused on writing a dissertation on women and gender issues in Pakistan. The AIPS, established in 1973, is a bi-national research and educational organization whose mission is to encourage and support research on issues relevant to Pakistan and the promotion of scholarly exchange between the United States and Pakistan. AIPS aims to facilitate scholarship within academe in Pakistan in various disciplines through the holding of dissertation workshops. This dissertation workshop is for M.Phil and Doctoral students in any of the social sciences whose research is focused on women and gender issues in Pakistan, and will be run by the eminent sociologist, Professor Anita M. Weiss, University of Oregon, with the participation of Professor Pervez Pathan, Director Sindh Development Studies Centre, University of Sindh Jamsho (Ph.D., Agricultural Economics, University of London).
This workshop intends to bring together M.Phil and doctoral students in Pakistan who are developing dissertation proposals or are in early phases of research or dissertation writing focused on women and/or gender issues in Pakistan (including anthropology, development studies, economics, Pakistan studies, political science, sociology, and women’s studies) and who seek to develop richer, more subtle or robust understandings of their fields. It intends to engage aspiring scholars of political and social analysis and assist them in such things as developing and reformulating research questions, placing research within theoretical contexts, facilitating the organization and structure of the dissertation, and sharing global norms of scholarship in research, writing and citation structures.
The workshop will be limited to 12 students, ideally from a broad array of universities within Pakistan. The workshop will last three days (with arrival on Monday January 21). Applicants need not have advanced to candidacy but must have at least drafted a dissertation research proposal. Applications are also welcome from doctoral students in the early phases of writing their dissertations. Students will be provided with reading assignments – a few short articles and each other’s proposals – which must be read prior to the commencement of the workshop. Workshop participants will be selected on the basis of the submitted project, the potential for useful exchanges among them, and a concern to include a wide range of perspectives and intellectual rigor.
Each day will include a working lunch to facilitate further discussion. The HEC will provide round-trip transportation to Islamabad and four nights accommodation in the HEC hostel in Islamabad for all student participants. There will be an inaugural dinner Monday evening January 21st. The first day of the workshop, January 22nd, will focus on discussions of seminal articles (those circulated in advance) as well as issues such as developing research questions, methodologies, bibliographies, etc. The second and third days will constitute discussions of dissertation proposals by each participant (which had previously been submitted and circulated). Participants will address both theory, methods, substance, and structure of each dissertation proposal, and tie these to the discussions held on the first day.
Final Report from Dr. Pervez Ahmad Pathan (Curriculum Vitae)
