IIHEd & OP Jindal Global University host Global Conference of STAR Network

The International Institute for Higher Education Research and Capacity Building (IIHEd) and OP Jindal Global University hosted the Global Conference of the Society of Transnational Academic Researchers (STAR) Network in collaboration with the Association of the Indian Universities.

The theme for the virtual conference this year was ‘Higher Education for the Greater Good: Leadership and Institutional Resilience, focused on leadership, resilience, and equity in a post-pandemic world’.

C. Raj Kumar, founding vice-chancellor of OP Jindal Global University and the director of IIHEd, said there could not be a better theme than this because the global pandemic has fundamentally altered the way of living and it has challenged the entire world of higher education. “Educators are the unsung heroes of the pandemic. They have made extraordinary contributions to ensure that the learning project goes uninterrupted,” he said.

The Global Conference is an academic conference and the premiere annual event of the Society of Transnational Academic Researchers (STAR) Scholars Network.

The conference aims to help academics, scholars, researchers, and students expand their academic and social networks by building human-to-human relationships with scholars across the world, celebrates cultures, facilitates critical conversations, builds global connections for research partnerships, and forms lifelong relationships.

More than 300 members from universities, NGOs, think tanks, and government sectors from 37 countries attended the conference.

Mousumi Mukherjee, India country director of the STAR scholars Network and deputy director of IIHEd, said the world has witnessed much resilience and innovation emerging from this period of crisis. “As the entire medical fraternity, social workers, teachers, students, parents and diverse professionals learnt to adapt to the New Normal, we realised the value of higher education for the greater good,” Mukherjee said.

The conference programme consisted of 50-plus research presentations, five roundtable discussions, and more than 10 thematic forum discussions.

One of the key attractions of this conference was the A. Noam Chomsky Global Connections awards ceremony, in which the senior scholars and promising young scholars are awarded by the STAR scholar's network each year followed by a keynote speech delivered by A. Noam Chomsky, an American Linguist and philosopher.

The conference also included a virtual arts exhibition and daily virtual cultural performances celebrating the diversity of Indian cultural traditions for an hour in the evening.

Watch the conference at https://l.jgu.edu.in/StarConference-WatchLive