NLSIU is conducting online Masterclasses during January 2026 to give wider audiences a glimpse into a NLS BA (Hons) classroom. These online sessions will dive deeper into the subject matter and showcase our pedagogy and approach to the social sciences and humanities.

The series of two Masterclasses, being held on January 22 and 23, 2026, will be anchored by our faculty Dr. Atreyee Majumder, NLS BA (Hons) Co-Chair and Dr. Sneha Thapliyal, Associate Professor of Economics.

Session I: ‘The Nourishment of Slow Research: Evaluating Ethnography with the Long Walk of Paul Salopek’ with Dr. Atreyee Majumder

January 22, 2026 | 6-7 PM

Paul Salopek, in the practice of “slow journalism”, has been on a 38,000km walk across the globe since 2013. You can find out about the various legs of Salopek’s journey already completed on the National Geographic website here. In an interview to the Emergence Magazine, he says “I think that this sense of well-being that comes with timelessness, the sense of being at peace – it must be very, very old. And it must be like a stylus dropping into a groove on the surface of a planet and making this music. And we are, our bodies are, that stylus, and we’re meant to move at this RPM that comes with the movement of our body.”

Dr. Majumder, in this talk, asks: What does Salopek’s 38000km walk teach us about our current condition? How do we use slow research techniques, and uncertainty of goals of research, to push the boundaries of what is knowable about our human condition? Is it useful to use “slow research” techniques in the professional world? In the world periled by climate change, the policy push to make lifestyle changes – say no to fossil fuel, active use of non-fueled transport, to slow down our hungry modernity, to make legal and moral claims on the more appropriate definitions of well-being, can “slow research” be meaningful? In this talk, Dr. Majumder gives a primer on the ethnographic method, calling it “slow research”, attempting to disclose its potential to push in the direction of moral and legal advocacy for other ways of occupying the modern, at this time that is plagued by climate change.

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Session II: ‘Counting the Heat: How Numbers Shape Our Understanding of India’s Heat Waves’ with Dr. Sneha Thapliyal, Associate Professor of Economics

January 23, 2026 | 6-7 PM

The world is getting hotter – but how much hotter? In the last year? In the last decade? In the last century? For instance, there has been an increase of 0.68 degrees in average temperatures in India since 1901. Sounds trivial, right? A closer look tells us that the rate of temperature increase has more than doubled since 1986. That temperatures during the night are rising 4.5 times faster than the day temperatures. That 37 cities in the country recorded temperatures >45 degrees in May 2024. Such heat waves are likely to affect us all equally, right? Socially and economically disadvantaged individuals are exposed to far greater durations of outdoor heat. And informal workers lose income at a rate that is 17 times higher than formal sector workers. Yet, emissions from consumption of the richest 10% of the country is 10 times as much as the emissions from the bottom 50%.

These questions about scientific facts and justice in climate change need us to think in numbers. Using the context of heat waves in India, we will discuss how numbers tell stories. What can numbers hide and what can numbers reveal. In this primer to the Numbers course in the BA programme at NLSIU, we will think about numbers not just as quantitative literacy but also as evidence for value-laden advocacy, policy critique, and democratic citizenship.

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