ITU organizing a modern literature conference “Afkar-e-Taza” Rescuing the Past, Shaping the Future

Lahore, Pakistan: Information Technology University, Lahore is organizing a three-day research literature conference in Al-Hamra cultural complex. ‘‘Afkaar-e-Taaza’’, is an International Conference with the aim of Rescuing the Past, Shaping the Future. The three days event will feature social scientists, philosophers, journalists, authors, historians, commentators, columnists and anthropologists from all over the world. 

The title of the event ‘AFKAR-E-TAZA’ is taken from the National Poet Dr.Muhammad Iqbal’s poem Takhliq, where the full verse reads, in translation: ‘New worlds derive their pomp from thoughts quite fresh and new/From stones and bricks a world was neither built nor grew.’ More than 40 speakers coming from all over the world from Top Universities.

The concept behind this event is to replicate the rigour of an academic conference with paper presentations, with the ease and accessibility of a literature festival, by engaging scholars in a lively discussion about their academic and scientific research with the general public.

Alhamra Cultural Complex Ghaddafi Stadium Lahore

This event aims to become the incubator of fresh thoughts in Pakistan so that not only does the country develop but we too personally gain from such interactions.  Indeed this is exactly what this event is hoping to achieve. It is through new and fresh ideas which spur on the new creation, innovations and development; new worlds are never created by bricks or mortar, but through the thoughts which germinate in the minds of the people. Some of the announced speakers are here;

• Dr Maria Misra

Dr Maria Misra is Associate Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Her research and publications are based on the politics, culture and economics of the 19th and 20th century’s imperialism and colonialism, foregrounded particularly on India and South Asia.

• Prof. Dr. Faisal Devji

Prof. Dr. Faisal Devji is currently University Reader in Modern South Asian History at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford.

• Prof. Dr. Peter Frankopan

Prof. Dr. Peter Frankopan holds a doctorate in Byzantine studies from the University of Oxford. He currently is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research and Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford.

• Afiya Shehrbano Zia

Afiya Shehrbano Zia is a researcher, columnist and an activist based in Pakistan. Afiya is also a founding member of an academic study group in Karachi.

• M. Steven Fish

M. Steven Fish is tenured political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

• Ejaz Haider

Ejaz Haider was a Ford Scholar at the Programme in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C.

• Prof. Dr. David Priestland

Prof. Dr. David Priestland is professor of History at Oxford University. His early research was based on the History of the Soviet Union, concentrating especially on the relationship between ideology, politics and political culture in the interwar era.

Event’s endeavour will hopefully ensure that public discourse in Pakistan is not hijacked by unscientific deliberations, but is carried out within a highly rigorous yet accessible environment, so that Afkar-e-Taza—new thoughts are created, nurtured and realised.