The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi Sarai is a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. CSDS is one of India’s best known research centres, with traditions of dissent and a commitment to the work of the public intellectual going back four decades. The Sarai Programme at CSDS was initiated in 2000 as a platform for discursive and creative collaboration between theorists, researchers and practitioners actively engaged in reflecting on contemporary urban spaces in South Asia—their politics, built form, ecology, culture and history—as well as on the histories, practices and politics of information and communication technologies, the public domain and media forms.
We invite applications for the upcoming cycle of Sarai-CSDS Independent Research Fellowships.
Who Can Apply?
Sarai invites independent researchers, media practitioners, software designers and programmers, urbanists, architects, artists and writers, as well as students (postgraduate level and above) and university/college faculty to apply for support with regard to research-driven projects. We support projects from all over India, and have an established track record of supporting deserving project proposals that originate outside the metropolitan centres of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore. We would like to see the focus of our fellowship programme expand to support more research in smaller towns and non-urban areas. The duration of the fellowship is six months, beginning from 1 January 2005. The final presentation of the research project will be made in Delhi in August 2005.
The Experience of Previous Years
This is the fourth year in which Sarai is calling for proposals for such fellowships. We would like to describe how the process has worked in previous years, as an indication of what applicants should expect. We have so far supported a hundred research projects over the past three years, including work in the areas of popular culture, literature, urban ethnography, architecture, geography, creative writing, graphic arts, new media, cinema studies, FLOSS software, histories of media forms and practices, sexuality, studies of technology and culture, and oral history. Successful applicants have included freelance researchers, academics, media practitioners, writers, journalists and activists.
The project proposals, postings and reports were submitted in English, Hindi or a combination of the two languages. We have seen that projects which set important but practical and modest goals were usually successful, whereas those that may have been conceptually sound but lacked sufficient motivation to actually approach a research objective in the field usually did not sustain themselves beyond the interim stage. Sarai interacts closely with the researchers over the period of the fellowship, and the independent fellows make a public presentation of their work at Sarai at the end of their fellowship period. During the term of their fellowship each fellow is required to make a posting to the Sarai Reader List every month, reporting on the development of their work. These postings, which are archived, are an important means by which the research process reaches a wider discursive community. They also help us to trace the progress of work during the grant period, and understand how the research interfaces with a larger public. Fellows also receive structured but informal feedback from Sarai in stages during the course of their work. Submissions by fellows include written reports and essays, photographs, tape recordings, pamphlets, maps, drawings and html presentations. On occasion, fellows have also incorporated performance into their final presentations.
What Happens to the Research Projects?
The annual research projects add to our now substantial archival collections on urban space and media culture. These are proving to be very significant value additions to the availability of knowledge resources in the public domain. Researchers are free to publish or render any part or all of their projects in any forms, independently of Sarai (but with due acknowledgment of the support that they have received from Sarai). Sarai Independent Research Fellows have gone on to publish articles in journals, work towards the making of films, exhibitions, websites, multimedia works and performances, and the creation of graphic novels, soundworks and books. We actively encourage all such efforts.
What We Are Looking For
Like previous years, this year too we are looking for proposals that are imaginatively articulated, experimental and methodologically innovative, but pragmatic and backed up by a well argued work plan which sets out a timetable for the project, as well as suggests how the support from Sarai will help in generating/providing specific resources (human and material) that the project needs.
Suggested Themes
Sarai’s interests lie in the city, and in media. Broadly speaking, any proposal that looks at the urban condition or at media, is eligible. More specifically, themes may be as diverse as habitation, sexuality, labour, migration, surveillance, intellectual property, social/digital interfaces, urban violence, street life, technologies of urban control, health and the city, the political economy of media forms, digital art and culture, or anything that the applicants feel will resonate with the philosophy and interests that motivate Sarai’s work. We are particularly interested in supporting work that delves into what we are beginning to call ‘Histories of the New’. This can include excavating the histories of different forms of media practice (early photography, cinema, print, radio, the music industry), as well as the histories of urban spaces and phenomena, neighbourhoods in cities, the evolution of utilities, transport and communications networks (electricity, telegraphy, telephony, the early Internet in India, railways, roads, urban public transport), labour, histories (including oral histories and biographical research) of dissident political movements, milieus and cultures and people associated with them. Again, Sarai supports innovative and inventive modes of rendering work into the public domain. Proposals which pay attention to this principle will be particularly valued. Also, proposals that include the collection of materials for our archive will be appreciated: in the past, fellows have submitted photographs, recordings, printed matter, maps, multimedia and posters related to the subject of their study to this archive.
Conditions
Applicants should be resident in India, and should have an account in any bank operating in India. The research fellowship would be available for up to six months and for a maximum amount of Rs 60,000. The fellowships do not require the fellows to be present at Sarai. Fellowship holders will be free to pursue their primary occupations, if any. Last date for submission: October 30, 2004