Westminster hosts Chevening Symposium 2025—South Asia at a Crossroads: Media, Power, and Authoritarianism

1 June 2025

Events, Journalism

Image from Chevening Awards (FCDO) on Facebook

On 28 May, the University of Westminster was host to the 1-day event, “South Asia at a Crossroads: Media Power and Authoritarianism.” Organised by the 2025 cohort of the Chevening South Asia Journalism Programme (SAJP), this symposium brought together 20 mid-career journalists from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka to explore the complex relationship between media, state power, and democracy in South Asia.

The event featured three dynamic panels:

Newsrooms or War Rooms: Where is responsible journalism in South Asia?
Democracy Under Watch: Surveillance in South Asia
Youth’s role in regime change: Lessons from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

The symposium was the culmination of a seven-week fellowship hosted by the University of Westminster, focusing on the theme “Autocracy and the Rise of Strongmen.” Fellows designed and moderated the event, drawing on their regional expertise and shared commitment to press freedom.

The co-directors of the SAJP course are Professor Jean Seaton and Eleanor Weber-Ballard, who run the programme with Research Associate, Vijayta Lalwani. Prof. Jean Seaton remarked:

“The event was remarkable. Eleanor and Vijayta were smashing — their efforts helped focus the Fellows so intensely. At one point, we had 107 people in the room, including an MP, FCDO officials, representatives from Open Democracy, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff University, the Imperial War Museum and British Museum, reporters from the Financial Times and The Economist, several Indian digital journalists, curators, essentially the entire Pakistani press club community in the UK, academics from Oxford, SOAS, LSE, and even a German diplomat on South Asia — that was the audience.”

The symposium highlighted both the urgent challenges and powerful possibilities for journalism in South Asia, offering a rare space for cross-border dialogue and solidarity in a time of democratic decline.

See the full programme below, and learn more here.

SAJP Symposium brochure Final