Professor Dina Siddiqi of ESS was a panelist at a roundtable discussion on “The Current State of the Garment Industry and Recommendations for Moving Forward”, organized by Nijiera Kori on August 16. Other panelists included the president of the BGMEA and anthropologist Saydia Gulrukh.
Professor Siddiqi was also a key note speaker at a symposium on the 1946 August 16 Killings. This was organized by the Indian origin Urdu Speaking Minority Council, Bangladesh at the Reporters’ Unity Lounge on August 24.
She also gave an in-house lecture to Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) staff on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The lecture focused on the relevance of UN institutions for promoting women’s rights in Bangladesh.
Professor S. M. Shamsul Alam presented his paper entitled "Governmentality and Nationalism in Bangladesh" at a conference on "Identity in the Globalized World: Dimensions, Transformations and Challenges". The conference was held at Independent University, Bangladesh between August 23 -25, 2014.
Shahidur Rahman, Associate Professor, joined ESS on August 3, 2014 after one year leave. During his leave Shahidur worked at Monash University, Melbourne as a Sessional Teacher for two semesters and taught two courses: Youth Culture and Social Change, Introduction to Sociology.
On August 10, Professor Esho Hideki, a faculty of Economics at HOSEI University, Japan came to ESS to conduct an interview of Shahidur Rahman for his ongoing research on "The dynamics and future of garments in Asia." Professor Esho was the former President of Japan Society for International Development. As part of the study, they visited a garment factory and talked to staffs working at buying houses and BGMEA.
Dr. Shahidur also published two op-ed articles on country’s leading dailies. His write up titled as "Ensuring fair trade in RMG sector" was published in The Daily Star on August 26 and the other named "How to get better Managers" got published in Dhaka Tribune on August 24, 2014. The links to the articles are:
<http://www.thedailystar.net/op-ed/ensuring-fair-trade-in-rmg-sector-38648>
<http://www.dhakatribune.com/op-ed/2014/aug/24/how-get-better-managers>
Meheri Tamanna, lecturer at ESS, presented a paper titled as “Neoliberal restructuring and the urban poor: Does urban poor doing better than their rural counterparts” at an international conference held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The paper demonstrates that the neo-liberal shift offers new opportunities and attracts rural poor to migrate, which in turn increases urban poor in cities. The paper attempts to find out whether the urban poor are doing better than their rural counterparts following the migration. The Australian Academy of Business and Social Sciences Conference 2014 was held in partnership with The Journal of Developing Areas, USA
from August 25 - 26, 2014.