Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy gave a keynote talk on Digital Dilettante and the Creation of Romance: A study of Youth Sub-stratum in the Digital Shadow lands of India at the Digital Intimacy: Young Women & Social Transformation in Asia  Symposium organised by Lignin University Hong Kong and Centre for Inter-Asian Research, Ahmedabad University on 12 May. Summary of Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy’s talk in her words: 

The talk explored myriad experiments with creative expressions of constructing the self in the digital sphere summarizing a 12-year research journey with young adults and social media. Discussions of anonymity and pseudonymity, of intimacy, desire, connection, and attention.  The  talk drew examples from the marginalised sections of youth in India. Romance emerges as the social theme underlying the power of digital media to overcome social constraint overlaying the thirst to connect, friend and chat going beyond Goffmanesque social performativity and towards defining potential social transgressions. Romance is the medium channeling and staging fantasies, aspirations and play to explore potential possibilities of social mobility

Link to symposium page: https://ahduni.edu.in/academics/schools-centres/centre-for-inter-asian-research/events/digital-intimacy-young-women-social-transformation-in-asia-mini-symposium-5/

The Centre for Inter-Asian Research aims to bring together scholars and practitioners to work towards imagining what the inter-Asian century might be like. The imagination would span modes of everyday living and doing, modes of organizing, creation of institutions and networks, development and deployment of technology, economic and social choice-making, re-imagining political and economic structures, and experimenting with diverse artistic forms.