FDP on ‘Research in Humanities and Social Sciences: Methodologies, Perspectives, and Dialogue’

The Faculty Development Programme (FDP) envisions the development of faculties and researchers through familiarizing them with recent trends and methodologies of different fields of academia. The Bhawanipur Education Society College has always been keen to reconfigure the perspective of its faculties and students at per development of diverse avenues of knowledge. Recently from 11-20 Dec. 2023, an FDP was organized on ‘Research in Humanities and Social Sciences: Methodologies, Perspectives, and Dialogue’ by BESC and Ramakrishna Mission (Rahara), where a wide range of topics was discussed by dignitaries from different disciplines both in online and offline mode. There were 17 offline and 10 online sessions. In 10 days of FDP, a total of 36 panellists shared their views with audiences. Total number of registered participants was 65. More audiences kept visiting the FDP at times to widen their epistemological periphery. This FDP, whose coordinator and joint coordinator were Mr. Tathagata Sen and Dr. Kasturi Mukherjee respectively from BESC, started with the inaugural keynote address on the topic of digital archives by Prof. Avijit Gupta (Jadavpur University). This reflected the urgent need for archival facilities and know-how in the digitization of documents in the academic arena. Dr. Suman Mukherjee’s speech on ‘developing self’ was very captivating and helped reorient the audience’s perspective about research aptitudes and self-management. In Humanities and Social studies, a large section of discourse is covered by women studies and the feministic approach, which has been meticulously intimated by Prof. Rekha Pandey and Dr. Debdutta Chaudhuri in two different sessions. Prof. Biswajit Roy, and Prof Amitava Chakrabarty pointed out our concerns towards the literary texts as the major sources of social dynamics and its varied interpretations with the changing paradigms. In this line, there is a growing importance of cross-cultural translations which have been vividly elaborated by Prof. Chinmoy Guha who has been in this field for decades. Research exercise in social science is changing rapidly with time. Hence its various dimensions like fieldwork, research ethics, etc. have been highlighted by Mr. M. Togowa, Dr. Debashis Majumder, Mr. M. Keshav, Dr. Shiladitya Chattopadhyay, and so on. An eminent historian from JNU, Prof. Kunal Chakraborty shared his views and research on deconstruction and reconstruction of our traditional texts which are the foundation of our heritage and culture. Modern research in humanities and social sciences nowadays is highly supported by Technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) which has changed the interface of the way research is conducted. Dr. Subhajit Das and Prof. Arjun Ghosh made participants familiar with some modern software-based technology that can reduce human manual efforts and expedite both qualitative and quantitative research works. Thus, the FDP was very fruitful for the participants in many ways, and on the last day, a successful valedictory session was followed by the distribution of certificates to the participants.