The Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, at Somerville College aims to pursue solutions for India’s sustainable development through bringing together diverse disciplines, sectors and individuals.

In order to engage new ideas we are launching a weekly discussion forum – an ‘Idea Room’ – at Somerville where we hope to bring together young and enthusiastic students and early career academics who work on, or are interested in, India and its diverse set of sustainable development challenges. This space will initiate conversations that will spark innovative ideas and imaginative thinking. These ideas may range from scientific to artistic, concern gender or political ecology. The idea room will be an informal, non-judgemental, space to test out ideas, whatever they are. There will be potential seed-funding to run small-scale workshops from ideas generated during these discussions.
In this inaugural session we will gather preliminary ideas and thoughts. Each participant will be asked to present their questions/thoughts/ideas in two minutes, with help of an object or image. These ideas will be used as a basis for following sessions, and steering the idea room into the future.

More details will we made available during the first Idea Room.
We expect to see the brightest young talent interested in India pursuing diverse academic disciplines from engineering to humanities, ecology to political science, health and medicine to literature and English. So if you have an idea that will make a difference to India’s future please come and share it with us!