Blogs

Inspired by the surreal accounts of the explorer and ‘man of a million lies’ Marco Polo, Imaginary Cities (Influx Press, 2015)  charts the metropolis and the imagination, and the symbiosis therein. A work of creative nonfiction, the book roams through space, time and possibility, mapping cities of sound, melancholia and the afterlife, where time runs backwards or which float among the clouds. In doing so, Imaginary Cities seeks to move beyond the clichés of psychogeography and hauntology, to not simply revisit the urban past, or our relationship with it, but to invade and reinvent it.

In early January, at the 107th annual Indian Science Congress held in Bengaluru, the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India shared its draft policy on Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR), inviting discussion. As a leading country with a strong base of modern science and its institutions, India’s efforts to prepare a framework of social responsibility of science is really very meaningful and important.

The Commonwealth Foundation is one of the Commonwealth's three intergovernmental agencies alongside the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth of Learning.  The role of the incoming Director-General - currently Anne Therese Gallagher AO - ensures she is also the Commonwealth's Ambassador for Civil Society. 

Many congratulations to Prof Balazs Nemeth, Associate Director of PASCAL in Europe, who has been elected to become president of the European Universities Continuing Education Network (EUCEN). This is a very well-deserved honour and PASCAL looks forward to continuing to work with EUCEN under the leadership of Professor Nemeth.

We are organizing a series of events in celebration of the 150^th Anniversary of the birth of Gandhi-ji.  We will be holding a major event in India close to the October 2 date, but we are inviting all those interested to consider marking this date in some way, with a talk, a publication, a symposium or something still more creative. What does the life of Gandhi mean for the world today, for higher education, and knowledge democracy?