Literature documents, represents and re-presents crises and vulnerabilities of different kinds: genocide, climate crisis, historical oppression, and disease among several others. Reading and analysing such literature of crisis is significant for humanity, the nonhuman and the planet as it shifts the focus from discussing the Humanities in crisis to the Humanities of crisis. This ideational shift is important as the compelling times we live in now demand healthy debates on how academia, especially humanities as a field, contributes to the examination of the multitudes of crises and vulnerabilities that the planet and its inhabitants are subjected to. By introducing the key concepts in Vulnerability Studies, this training programme aims to enable the participants to identify and understand those strands of literature that study various forms of human, nonhuman and planetary vulnerability. The programme explores the ways of ‘reading’ diverse forms of vulnerability in literary texts. Through critical inquiry using diverse lenses, from trauma theory to literary gerontology, the programme aims to draw attention to specific narrative modes and aesthetics of representing and addressing vulnerability and crisisin various genres of literature: poetry, the graphic novel, the disease memoir, cli-fi, and drama. 

Download Brochure

National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli (NIT Trichy or NIT-T) founded in 1964 is a public technical and research university in Tamil Nadu, India. It is one of India's oldest technical universities and is located in a campus of 800 acres. The university is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India. The university focuses exclusively on science, technology, engineering, management, architecture and humanities.

National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranked the university 1st among the NITs in India in 2020. Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry named the university as the "University of the Year" in 2017. The university has academic and research collaborations with universities and research centres in India and abroad including the United States and United Kingdom and is undergoing accelerated growth through the World Bank-funded Technical Education Quality Improvement Program (TEQIP).

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (formerly, the Department of Humanities) has been in existence since 2004. The department is known for independent interdisciplinary research and for a dynamic collaboration between faculty and students. To meet the existing demands of industry, business, public and private organizations, academic and human services, the Department has constantly striven for a practical curriculum with a high degree of professional relevance, enabling students to face real time challenges. Accordingly, the Department has been offering a wide range of core and elective courses to undergraduates and graduates. The Department has been offering a full-fledged Ph.D. program since 2004 and has produced quality research work in newer areas of Humanities and Social Sciences. Recognizing the growing demand for humanities-based courses, the Department also offers Minor Degree Courses in Economics and in Language/Literature. In 2020, the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences started an MA programme in English (Language and Literature). Faculty in the Department are committed teachers engaged in continuous research in niche areas like Language and Genetics, Health Humanities, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, English and Employability Skills, Critical Pedagogy and Aviation English.

The UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies, located in the Department of English at the University of Hyderabad, is the outcome of a decade’s work by the Chairholder Prof. Pramod K. Nayar in the interrelated fields of Human Rights and literary-cultural studies, ecological precarity, industrial disaster and precarity, and extreme cultures. The Chair provides a theoretical, pedagogic and curricular framework for understanding, teaching and studying the United Nation’s SDGs. The Chair’s objectives include: developing a conceptual vocabulary of vulnerability, pedagogic tools and cultural apparatuses to ameliorate, sensitize and prevent an amplification of the multiple vulnerabilities the globe witnesses, and the archivization of a history of contemporary vulnerability across industrial disaster, climate change, health crises, gender inequalities, the greying of populations, among others. This teaching and research unit has organised several lecture series with eminent national and international scholars as resource persons, designed courses, and conducted seminars in the core areas that come under the Chair’s purview. The Chair engages in fruitful academic collaborations with renowned institutes of Higher Education in India and abroad.

The University of Hyderabad is a top ranking public central research university located in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. Founded in 1974, the mostly residential campus has more than 5,000 students and 400 faculty, from several disciplines. The university was established along the lines of the Six-Point Formula of 1973 . In January 2015, the University of Hyderabad received the Visitor's Award for the Best Central University in India, awarded by the President of India. The university is recognized as an Institute of Eminence (IoE) by the University Grants Commission (UGC) through the UGC . In 2020, the university was ranked 2nd among India's government universities by India Today.