Consciousness Studies
The research, outreach and documentation completed by the Consciousness Studies programme in 2020-21 pertained largely to projects funded by the Tata Trusts, DST-CSRI, and DST-SATYAM. The interdisciplinary nature of the research carried out by programme members facilitated the development of frameworks beyond the mainstream and concepts that were original yet addressed the marginal. For instance, the studies on causality and indigenous notions of health highlight the importance of considering a discipline-centric, yet multifarious set of data inputs. The programme organised, with the hashtag ‘#Care Consciously! Defeat Corona,’ several online programmes such as short academic courses, workshops, Friday lectures, poetry sessions, and lectures series, and through all these created a bridge with the public at large towards connecting life, living and health in the pandemic times. The programmes were attended by students, professionals and the larger public from across the world, and more than 300 institutions connected with the programme regularly.
NIAS-CSP Courses
Philosophy, Self & Consciousness I Research Writing & Communication
Phenomenology & Social Research I Quintessence of Being I Readings from Indian Aesthetics
Facets Of AI I The Lockdown Experience I Knowing, Experiencing and Being
NIAS CSP Consciousness Conversations
Philosophy Self and Consciousness I The Lockdown Experience I Research Writing and Communication
Reflective Course I Sanskit Language and its traditions series I Svasthya Rasa Bodhini
Phenomenology and Social Research I Quintessence of Being I Readings from Indian Aesthetics
Facets of AI Workshop I Kaavyaalaap I NIAS CSP Friday Lectures
Sangeetha Menon Professor and Dean School: School of Humanities Programme: Consciousness Studies Room no: F6 080-22185090 prajnanata@gmail.com Download CV_0.docx |
Associate Professor
Honorary Visiting Professor, Senior Homi Bhabha Fellow
Associate Professor
Kashmir Saivism, Self-Reflection and Aesthetics The concepts of consciousness and self-reflection in the context of related epistemological and ontological structures that imply insights for understanding causal mechanism in Kashmir Saivism are studied. The cognitive and the aesthetic characteristics that underlie the philosophical discussions on emotions have been brought out in the light of understanding perceptual and experiential reality vis- a- vis the metaphysical structures of the concept of pratyabhijna. |
Causal Structures, Consciousness and the Pratyabhijna The major intent is to focus on the fundamental discussions pertaining to philosophical and psychological questions raised by the thinkers of Kashmir Saivism and attempt the contextualising of Information theory, consciousness studies and artificial intelligence, from the view point of analysing causal structures of thought, experiences and entities. The study is the first comparative attempt to juxtapose emotions, aesthetic process, memory, cognitive structures and the self in the context of understanding consciousness in Indian philosophy. |
Study of Alternate and Indigenous Psychiatric and Psychological Practises of Healing and Wellness The indigenous healing and wellness traditions of Kerala are being documented to understand the psychological and psychiatric implications with the help of examining antiquity, tribal medicine and native landscapes, ritual healing, and indigenous living. The association of language with consciousness, specifically how ambiguity as a function of language might be influential in psychological healing through Mantravada, is being addressed. |
A Study of Consciousness Measures and Synchrony between Brain and Cardiovascular Dynamics in Yoga Experience The depth and quality of yoga and meditation on well-being has been addressed. A host of complexity measures of consciousness have been evaluated and have converged on a novel measure that we have proposed – Network Causal Activity. |
Causality Testing in Cognitive Neuroscience with Applications to Measures of Consciousness A new algorithm – Compression-Complexity-Causality (CCC) to identify causal relationships between time series was invented. CCC performs reliably on short, noisy, sampled and filtered time series that occur in practical scenarios can be applied to wide range of applications in econometrics, cognitive science, climatology, measuring consciousness and sustainability research. Network Causal Activity (NCA) was tested on ECoG datasets from monkeys to characterise the level of consciousness in awake and anesthesia states based on causal activity in brain networks. NCA could be applied to help neurosurgeons determine the level of consciousness in patients who are unable to report their experience. A causal stability synchronisation theorem which is a necessary and sufficient condition for coupled dynamical systems to achieve complete synchronization has been proved. Its potential applications include determining when a group of coupled neurons will synchronise indicating the onset of a seizure. |
Automatic Identification of SARS-CoV-2 vs. SARS-CoV-1 Viruses A compression-complexity distance measure was proposed to identify the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused global pandemic of virus disease (COVID-19) and distinguishing it from SARS-CoV-1 virus using only short contiguous fragments of nucleotide sequences. The proposed algorithm could potentially be used in vaccine research by enabling rapid matching of genomic sequences and could avoid the need for sequence assembly. Neuro-chaos Inspired AI: ChaosNet, a chaos based artificial neural network architecture for classification has been proposed mimicking the chaotic firing of neurons in the brain (which conventional algorithms do not). ChaosNet produces state-of-the art performance on classification tasks on publicly available datasets. With as low as 0.05% of the total data used for training, the proposed method reports accuracies ranging 73% to 98% while also claiming to be robust to external noise. |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Pranay SY co-authored Causal Discovery using Compression-Complexity Measures arXiv:2010.09336v3 [cs.LG], October 2020. |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Aditi Kathpalia co-authored Measuring causality: the science of cause and effect arXiv:1910.08750v1 (Stat.ME), 19 October. |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Karthi Balasubramanian co-authored Automatic identification of SARS Coronovirus using compression-complexity measures bioRXiv, 27 March. |
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Nithin Nagaraj Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Distinguishing different levels of consciousness using a novel network causal activity measure IEEE Conference on Global Conference for Advancement in Technology (IEEE-GCAT). Bengaluru, 18th October 2019 |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Aditi Kathpalia co-authored Data-based intervention approach for complexity-causality measure Peeri Computer Science (May)5: e196. |
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Nithin Nagaraj co-authored Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme A Neurochaos Learning Architecture for Genome Classification arXiv:2010.10995 [cs.NE], October 2020. |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Harikrishnan N B co-authored When Noise meets Chaos: Stochastic Resonance in Neurochaos Learning arXiv:2102.01316 [q-bio.NC], March 2021. |
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Nithin Nagaraj co-authored Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Evolution of novel activation functions in neural network training of astronomy data: habitability classification of exoplanets The European Physical Journal 229(16): 2629-2738. |
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Nithin Nagaraj co-authored Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme ISCG: An intelligent sensing and caption generation system for object detection and captioning using deep learning International Journal of Intelligent Information Technologies 16(4): 51-67 |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Pranay SY co-authored Causal discovery using compression-complexity measures Journal of Biomedical Informatics 117(103724) |
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Harikrishnan N B, Nithin Nagaraj co-authored A novel chaos theory inspired neuronal architecture IEEE Conference on Global Conference for Advancement in Technology (IEEE GCAT), Bengaluru, 18 October 2019 |
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Nithin Nagaraj Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Time-reversibility, causality and compression-complexity Entropy 23(3): 327. |
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Nithin Nagaraj co-authored Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Chaos or randomness? effect of vagus nerve stimulation during sleep on heart-rate variability https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03772063.2020.1780165 IETE Journal of Research |
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Harikrishnan N B, Nithin Nagaraj co-authored Harikrishnan N B is PhD Scholar; Nithin Nagaraj is Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme ChaosNet: A chaos based artificial neural network architecture for classification Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Non-linear Science 29 (11):113125 (17 pages) |
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Meera Kumar Menon, Sangeetha Menon co-authored Beyond Body–Mind: Self-narratives and Consciousness. Psychological Studies 64(3): 266–274. |
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Narendar Pani, Nithin Nagaraj co-authored Narendar Pani is Professor and Dean; Nithin Nagaraj is Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Towards an Institutional Strategy for the Study of Sustainability (NIAS/U/RR/09/2020) |
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Saurabh Todariya PhD Scholar, Consciousness Studies Programme Embodying Being: Between Heidegger and Kashmiri Shaivism CETANA: The Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 1. Issue 2. June, 2021 |
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Saurabh Todariya PhD Scholar, Consciousness Studies Programme Technology and Truth in Post-Modern Age: A Phenomenological Analysis Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies: 25/1-2 Jan-June 2021: 249-261 |
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Sangeetha Menon, Shankar Rajaraman, Lakshmi Kuchibotla Sangeetha Menon is Professor and Head; Shankar Rajaraman is Post-Doctoral Associate, Consciousness Studies Programme Wellbeing and Self-transformation in Indian Psychology https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2018.37.1.13 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies. 37(1), 2018 |
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Shankar Rajaraman Post-Doctoral Associate, Consciousness Studies Programme Nipunapraghunakam Bangalore: Preksha Pratishthana, 2019 |
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Shankar Rajaraman Post-Doctoral Associate, Consciousness Studies Programme Bharavatarastava Bangalore: Preksha Pratishthana, 2019 |
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Shankar Rajaraman Post-Doctoral Associate, Consciousness Studies Programme The West on Our Poems: A Critique K.S. Kannan (Ed.), Western Indology on Rasa: A Pūrvapakṣa (pp. 227-249), 2018. Chennai: Infinity Foundation India |
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Sukanya G, Meera Kumar Menon, Sangeetha Menon Sukanya G is PhD Scholar; Meera Kumar Menon is Doctoral Student; Sangeetha Menon is Professor and Head, Consciousness Studies Programme എഴുതാപ്പുറങ്ങളിലൂടെ- പരമ്പരാഗത ചികിത്സാരീതികളിലേക്കൊരു തിരനോട്ടം Vijnanakairali, Kerala Bhasha Institute, Trivandrum, pp 42-48, September 2021 |
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Sukanya G PhD Scholar, Consciousness Studies Programme തനത് ഭക്ഷണസംസ്ക്കാരം വയനാട്ടിലെഗോത്രവർഗ്ഗക്കാർക്കിടയിൽ (Food Culture among the Tribes of Wayanad) ആദിവാസി, ദളിത് - ജീവിതവും പ്രതിരോധവും (Tribe, Dalit-Life and Resistance), edited by Sowmya Baby. Paideia books, pp.128-134, 2020 |
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Sangeetha Menon, Pushya A Gautama, Saurabh Todariya Sangeetha Menon is Professor and Head; Pushya A Gautama is Doctoral Student; Saurabh Todariya is PhD Scholar, Consciousness Studies Programme Post-COVID world and the New Humanism: intersections of wellness, philosophy and technology COVID 19 Pandemic: History, Science and Society, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt of India, and Indian Council of Medical Research, 2021, pp 140-151 |
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Pushya A Gautama Doctoral Student, Consciousness Studies Programme Ayurveda: A review of challenges and opportunities https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaim.2021.06.012 Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine. 2021 Jul-Sep;12(3):556-561 |
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Siddharth S PhD Scholar, Consciousness Studies Programme What more than structure do we know? Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 37: 115-131, 2020 |
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Sisir Roy, Samyadeb Bhattacharya, Prof. B V Sreekantan Honorary Visiting Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Dirac’s large number hypothesis: Is it related to 40 Hz gamma oscillation or consciousness? Neuroquantology 13(3): 253-258, 2015 |
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Sisir Roy, Reddy J Shashi Kiran Honorary Visiting Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Meditation as a preventive sleep medicine Neuro Quantology 16(11):100-103, 2018 |
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Sangeetha Menon, Rao Naren Professor and Head, Consciousness Studies Programme A heuristic model linking yoga philosophy and self-reflection to examine underlying mechanisms of add-on yoga treatment in schizophrenia International Review of Psychiatry 28(3): 265-272, 2016 |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Karthi Balasubramanian Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Dynamical complexity of short and noisy time series: Compression-complexity vs. Shannon entropy European Physics Journal Special Topics (Special issue: Aspects of Statistical Mechanics and Dynamical Complexity 226(10): 2191–2204, 2017 |
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Sisir Roy, Sarangam Majumdar Honorary Visiting Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Relevance of quantum mechanics in bacterial communication NeuroQuantology 16(3): 6, 2018 |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Karthi Balasubramanian Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Three perspectives on complexity: Entropy, compression, subsymmetry The European Physical Journal Special Topics, 226: 3251-3272, 2017 |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Aditi Kathpalia co-authored Nithin Nagaraj is Associate Professor; Aditi Kathpalia is Doctoral Student, Consciousness Studies Programme Causal stability and synchronization Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science (Fast-track), (Sep) 29: 091103, 2019 |
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Harikrishnan N B, Aditi Kathpalia, Nithin Nagaraj, Snehanshu Saha Harikrishnan N B is PhD Scholar; Aditi Kathpalia is Doctoral Student; Nithin Nagaraj is Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme ChaosNet: A chaos based artificial neural network architecture for classification Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Non-linear Science 29 (11):113125 (17 pages), 2019 |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Karthi Balasubramanian, K Harikumar, Sandipan Pati Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Vagus nerve stimulation modulates complexity of heart rate variability differently during sleep and wakefulness Annals of Indian Academy of Neurology 20(4): 403-407, 2017 |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Karthi Balasubramanian Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Aging and cardiovascular complexity: Effect of the length of RR tachograms PeerJ 4:e275, 2016 |
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Aditi Kathpalia, Nithin Nagaraj Aditi Kathpalia is Doctoral Student; Nithin Nagaraj is Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Measuring Causality: The Science of Cause and Effect https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-021-1119-y Resonance-Journal of Science Education, Volume 26, Issue 2, February 2021, pp. 191-210 |
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Aditi Kathpalia, Nithin Nagaraj Aditi Kathpalia is Doctoral Student; Nithin Nagaraj is Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Time-Reversibility, Causality and Compression-Complexity https://doi.org/10.3390/e23030327 Entropy 2021, 23(3), 327 |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Snehanshu Saha, Archana Mathur, Rahul Yedida, Sneha H R Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Evolution of novel activation functions in neural network training for astronomy data: Habitability classification of exoplanets https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2020-000098-9 Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 229, 2629–2738, November 2020 |
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Sisir Roy Honorary Visiting Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Book Review: Story of Consciousness: Current Science Vol. 119, No. 6, September 25, 2020 |
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Nithin Nagaraj Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Measuring consciousness in the clinic In: Biomedical and Clinical Engineering for Healthcare Advancement edited by N. Sriraam https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-0326-3.ch004 IGI Global, 2020, pp. 66-77. |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Aahan Singh, Srinidhi Hiriyannaiah, Lalit Mohan Patnaik Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme ISCG: An Intelligent Sensing and Caption Generation System for Object Detection and Captioning Using Deep Learning https://doi.org/10.4018/IJIIT.2020100104 International Journal of Intelligent Information Technologies (IJIIT) 16(4), pp. 51-67. 24 Sep. 2020 |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Karthi Balasubramanian, Sandipan Pati Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Chaos or Randomness? Effect of Vagus Nerve Stimulation During Sleep on Heart-Rate Variability https://doi.org/10.1080/03772063.2020.1780165 IETE Journal of Research (Taylor and Francis), Published Online, June 30, 2020 |
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Sisir Roy, Sarangam Majumdar Honorary Visiting Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Microbial Communication Springer |
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Sangeetha Menon, Nithin Nagaraj, V V Binoy Sangeetha Menon is Professor and Head; Nithin Nagaraj is Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Self, Consciousness and Culture: Interdisciplinary Convergences on Knowing and Being Springer NATURE, 2018 |
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Sangeetha Menon, Anindya Sinha, Prof. B V Sreekantan Professor and Head, Consciousness Studies Programme Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Consciousness and the Self Springer NATURE 2014 |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Harikrishnan N B Nithin Nagaraj is Associate Professor; Harikrishnan N B is PhD Scholar, Consciousness Studies Programme When Noise meets Chaos: Stochastic resonance in Neurochaos Learning https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2021.06.025 Neural Networks, Volume 143, June 2021, Pages 425-435. ISSN 0893-6080 |
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Nithin Nagaraj Associate Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme Using cantor sets for error detection PeerJ Computer Science 5: e171, 2019 |
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Sangeetha Menon, Meera Kumar Menon, Rakesh Kumar Sangeetha Menon is Professor and Head; Meera Kumar Menon is Doctoral Student; Rakesh Kumar is PhD Scholar, Consciousness Studies Programme Beyond Body–Mind: Self-narratives and Consciousness https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-019-00519-w Psychological Studies 64(3): 266–274, 2019 |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Pranay SY Nithin Nagaraj is Associate Professor; Pranay SY is PhD Scholar, Consciousness Studies Programme Causal Discovery using Compression-Complexity Measures https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2021.103724 Journal of Biomedical Informatics, in press (published online), Volume 117, May 2021, 103724 |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Harikrishnan N B, Pranay SY Nithin Nagaraj is Associate Professor; Harikrishnan N B is PhD Scholar; Pranay SY is PhD Scholar, Consciousness Studies Programme A Neurochaos Learning Architecture for Genome Classification arXiv:2010.10995 [cs.NE], October 2020 |
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Nithin Nagaraj, Harikrishnan N B Nithin Nagaraj is Associate Professor; Harikrishnan N B is PhD Scholar, Consciousness Studies Programme Neurochaos Inspired Hybrid Machine Learning Architecture for Classification https://doi.org/10.1109/SPCOM50965.2020.9179632 International Conference on Signal Processing and Communications (IEEE SPCOM), Bengaluru, July 2020, pp. 1-5 |
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Sangeetha Menon Professor and Head, Consciousness Studies Programme The ‘Outer Self’ and the ‘Inner Body’: Exteriorization of the self in cognitive sciences Journal of Human Values 22(1): 39-45, 2016 |
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Sangeetha Menon Professor and Head, Consciousness Studies Programme Brain, Self and Consciousness: Explaining the Conspiracy of Experience Springer NATURE, 2014 |
NIAS CSP Reading Glass Emerging Information Technologies: Internet of Things Prof Tilak Agerwala, Visiting Professor , Consciousness Studies Programme, School of Humanities Consciousness Studies Programme 14 November 2019 |
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NIAS CSP Reading Glass Emerging Information Technologies: Artificial Intelligence and other technologies Prof Tilak Agerwal , Visiting Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme, School of Humanities Consciousness Studies Programme 13 November 2019 |
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NIAS CSP Reading Glass Consciousness and Causality: Perspectives from integrated information theory, phenomenology, and Kashmir Shaivism Dr Shankar Rajaraman, Dr Nithin Nagraj, and Dr Saurabh Todariya, Consciousness Studies Programme, School of Humanities Consciousness Studies Programme 25 October 2019 |
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Interactive Brainstorming Sessions Phenomenological Approach of Qualitative Research Prof Koshy Tharakan Consciousness Studies Programme 22 October 2019 |
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NIAS CSP Reading Glass Self, Identity, and Healing Practices Sangeetha Menon, Meera Kumar Menon, Sangeetha G, Consciousness Studies Programme, School of Humanities Consciousness Studies Programme 27 September 2019 |
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Svasthya Rasa Bodhini Between Dionysus and Plato: Is there an aesthetic thinking in ancient Greece? Dr Soumyabrata Choudhury, Professor, School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU Consciousness Studies Programme Lecture Hall, NIAS 18 September 2019 |
CSP recognising the importance of Leadership and Connecting Communities Initiatives during the COVID-19 Pandemic times organised several customised online short courses. The current pandemic times brought in a “closed down” and a psychological feeling of the inability to connect, socialise, or seek out for help and knowledge, including a peer connect.
Considering such a challenge that has social, psychological and pedagogic implications, initiatives were conceptualised and implemented towards “Leadership and Connecting Communities during the COVID-19 Pandemic times”. .
The following are the Courses organised and completed during the academic year:
- “Knowing, Experiencing and Being: Methods, Applications and Philosophies inspired by Phenomenology, Collective Frameworks, and Reflective Capabilities”
- Online Workshop on “Facets of Artificial Intelligence”
- Online Webinar series on the "Nine Dimensions of the 'Lockdown experience: The psychology and philosophy of the Self seeking freedom and boundlesness in a bounded and limited world"
- Online Course on “Readings from Indian Aesthetics”
- Online Course on “Phenomenology and Social Research”
- Online Course on “Quintessence of Being: Examining Existence and Experience”
- Online Course on “Introduction to Western Classical Music”
- School of Humanities Foundation Course
- International lecture series on “Sanskrit language and its traditions: A Journey through its history and contemporaneity”
- Other series include: “Svāsthya-rasa-bodhinī Public Lecture Series” “NIAS CSP Friday Lectures”; “Kaavyaalaap” and “The Reading Glass”