Welcome to the website for the conference “Living in the Aftermath: Catastrophes in South Asia and the Himalayas” organized by the Centre for South Asian and Himalayan Studies (Centre d’études sud-asiatiques et himalayennes, CNRS/EHESS).

The theme of this conference is in keeping with recent, global-scale and transdisciplinary reflections on the way the modern world thinks about and deals with disasters and the unexpected, be they ecological, technological or health-related, whether they are collective or individual. The recent Covid-19 pandemic, widespread climate change, the collapse of biodiversity, the spread of armed conflicts and the resulting humanitarian problematics are all reshaping state, social and even cultural structures, and require us to think along these lines, since catastrophes are no longer exclusively the purview of dystopian imagination. Closely linked to uncertainty, risk and modernity, catastrophes brutally interrupt everyday life, forcing men and women to rethink their place in the world. In order to use catastrophes as a heuristic tool or reading key, it is important to consider them in the longue durée of their aftermath.

Check out the full programme for more details.

Contact: catastrophe@sciencesconf.org