Dr. Shweta Sinha Deshpande has a Ph.D. in Archaeology and has contributed to archaeological and associated anthropological research through an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach. She has been associated with Liberal Arts education for more than a decade and has an in-depth and a keen understanding of this model and the value addition this model offers to the world and India’s growing population dividend, the globalized industry and the service sector. Her current research focus is on Globalization and its influence on the socio-cultural space including religion, trends in migration, education and development. The thrust of her research is on interactions between individuals and cultures, both modern and ancient. Her work has led her to conclude that the key to understanding current social issues is to recognize the often-unrealized cultural baggage that people carry.
She has authored many research articles and books and was the founding President of the India Big History Association and a founding Member of the Society for South Asia Archaeology (SOSAA). She currently serves on the Editorial Board of Migration Letters an international journal on migration and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai under the Ministry of Culture, Government of India.
The Twenty-first century is unprecedented and crucial for the globe and humanity. It is the fastest-changing that history has ever seen and offers innumerable opportunities like never before to those who are quick at adapting and learning the new ways of this world. It is also vulnerable to the challenges and threats of the social, political, and physical environment leading to an ‘existential risk’. This dynamic world needs educated citizens equipped with skillsets to drive into uncharted territories and help shape our future.
The world we engage with every day is not compartmentalised. It flows from one to the other. Culture, media, and education influence and shape the worldviews and lenses with which we view ourselves and the surroundings. Since it is not always within our hands to shape the culture or media that we engage with, education becomes the means that will lead to a critical comprehensive understanding.
Education, according to Nelson Mandela, ‘is the most powerful weapon which can be used to change the world’. Education steers curiosity, and together, they become the means that allow individuals and societies to truly engage, comprehend and make sense of the world that we live in.
Today technology has created a borderless experience of learning with access to unparalleled data, people and answers to questions. What is therefore needed, is the skill to make sense of the information that is around them. The education needed therefore is not facts, figures and information but the capability of creative and critical thinking; communication and collaboration for problem solving at social, professional and personal levels.
SSLA’s four-year B.A/B.Sc. Liberal Arts Honours degree moves beyond the traditional degree to promote an inter-multi-and-trans-disciplinary holistic and well-rounded education. It brings together the deep knowledge of individual disciplines and transferable skills of creative problem solving; reasoning and critical thinking, intercultural collaboration and team work with communication for the 21st century dynamic world. It provides the much-needed agility, adaptability and ability to identify and connect the dots to see the whole and the parts as it exists in the real world offering an opportunity for those who are interested in positions of responsibility and decision making in their professional, personal and public lives.