Talk at India FOSS - Making accessible political archives

While the talk’s original proposal contained the title: ‘Let us make accessible political archives on the internet’, it morphed into a pitch to make political archives outside of the internet, because the definition of ‘accessible’ is my mind is to really take these out of the circles within which these often get shared: The internet, public policy circles, bangalore and so on. See the slides here The recorded talk is available on YouTube ...

September 20, 2025 · adhavan

Beta release of Constitutional Observer

I present a public beta of the Constitutional Observer that was in the works for a few months now. It brings together a corpus of the Constituent Assembly debates and questions from the LS. It is envisioned as a comparative interface to understand the historical context of a constitutional argument. You can ask it seemingly simple questions, and it will semantically understand and return relevant responses from both datasets. The conceptual framing of these questions is meant to poke curiosity at a primal level, outside of explicit notions of political questioning.These were first exhibited at SMI Collective 2024, a show case of Srishti Manipal final semester projects at MAHE, Bengaluru

May 28, 2024 · Adhavan

Innocent questions, innocent poetry, political personals'

I write in brief about the making of the questions that were exhibited along with the Constitutional Observer, and a little of the vision for it.

May 28, 2024 · Adhavan

Linguistic Pluralism, Migration and Disenfranchisement in Bengaluru

This paper will establish Bengaluru as a plural city with many lingua-cultural identities that have a distinct geographic spread. It will then delve into an attempted analysis of the linguistic demographics of the electoral roll of Bengaluru, thus building a pathway to measure representation electorally. It also attempts to understand language linked trends in Education.

December 28, 2023 · Adhavan

Research Narratives - Spatial and multimedia data annotation platform

We present Research Narratives that came out of a vision to have an environment that encourages responsible use of data for research and communication. It is a tool that provides a collaborative environment for multidisciplinary research or writing projects that communicate patterns from data.

December 4, 2023 · Adhavan, Sooraj Raveendran

Maps that are vessels of content, not the boring cartography of the digital age

I came across Maps of Uncomfortable Boundaries / Atlas of My World by Zarina at the Kochi Biennale. I would like to narrate my immediate set of thoughts, or observations, as a way to argue that maps are not simply representations but also vessels that contain, the visual nature by nature. Atlas of My World, 2001, six woodcuts with Urdu text printed in black on handmade Indian paper, sheet size 65 x 49.5 cm, edition of 20, © Zarina, courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Found from http://www.thirdtext.org/zamindar-zarina I immediately notice the Urdu text on the map. How often have I seen non-English text on India? Or on America, which traps my attention even more. The sheer visual quality of the map, with its obvious focus on the crude line that goes beyond the borders, semiotically represents more in weight and narration than any straight and clean line on a map or a word seemingly can. The handwritten, non-standardised text, also non-anglical text also narrates more. ...

December 2, 2023 · Adhavan

Mapping Hindutva using the Hindutva Watch Database

The HW database is a collection of news articles, tweets, and other sources of information about the activities of Hindutva groups in India. I geocode the database and integrate it into a prototype narrative explorer.

June 2, 2023 · Adhavan

Computational STEAM, teaching science with Scratch at Parikrma Schools

A short recount of my experiences teaching sections of the ‘Light’ chapter from standard 8 text books for Parikrma School Students.

October 15, 2022 · map[email:adhavan.sivaraj16@gmail.com name:Adhavan Sivaraj]

Game aids for the elderly

Empathising with the reduced social mobility of the elderly and designing accessibility devices to allow them to participate in games

February 17, 2022 · map[email:adhavan.sivaraj16@gmail.com name:Adhavan Sivaraj]

Mapping Harassment in Yelahanka

An ongoing project that is looking into capturing data on harassment inside Yelahanka, Bengaluru

October 3, 2021 · map[email:adhavan.sivaraj16@gmail.com name:Adhavan Sivaraj]