Pramod K Nayar and Anna Kurian, of the UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies, Department of English, in collaboration with Professor Tess Maginess, Education and Social Work Open Learning Continuing Education Programme, School of Social Sciences, Queen’s University, Belfast (QUB), launched a 1-credit, 5-week online course, on 16th Jan 2024. This course, titled ‘Ageing through Literature from the Global South and Global North’, a first of its kind joint-teaching initiative of the Department, will be free for UoH students. The University has approved it as an ‘extra credit course’.


The resources and teaching materials, also jointly developed, are available on the dedicated website hosted by QUB (https://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/ageing-in-literature/ ). The texts for study include writings by Anita Desai, Seamus Heaney, Tove Jansson, Keki N Daruwalla, WB Yeats and Manohar Shetty, all read within theoretical frameworks for reading ageing.

Professor BJ Rao, Vice Chancellor, in his message stated:

I congratulate Professors Tess Maginess of Queen’s University Belfast, and Pramod K. Nayar and Anna Kurian of the UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies, Department of English, University of Hyderabad for launching this very unique joint teaching program. The course texts primarily being chosen from a pool of relevant and prominent writers from the Global North and South. Indian and Irish students all working together will bring in a rich tapestry of inter-cultural experiential learning, the hallmark of real educational experience. I applaud the course instructors and all its stakeholders.

Sir Ian Greer, Vice Chancellor QUB, in his message said:

The approach taken by Professors Pramod K Nayar and Anna Kurian in Hyderabad and Professor Tess Maginess in Queen’s is imaginative in using literature as a pedagogic lens and in developing a much more holistically global understanding through exploring creative work from the global south and global north. The pilot course is also innovative in bringing together older students from Queen’s Open Learning Continuing Education Programme with young students from Hyderabad’s Master’s English Programme, thus fostering intergenerational understanding and a sense of human interdependency.

The funding for the online resources comes from Queen’s University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences, COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) scheme.

Email: unescochair-vulnerabilitystudies@uohyd.ac.in