Movetia-Swissnex Webinar: Teaching & Learning in India

Imagine if you could inspire curiosity among students in ways they—and you—haven’t experienced before. For instance, what if your classroom were a treehouse? Or what if you could hire a robot as a teaching assistant? What if you could teach at a paperless school where everything was digital? Imagine teaching students maths or geography using live examples from climate change so they could learn about the main subject while contextualising it to the broader environment and how it might affect them. Imagine a room—or a treehouse—full of children from different backgrounds who spoke different languages. Can you picture the kind of creativity and imagination you alone could inspire?

All of this is a reality in India and here’s an opportunity for you to experience this world, learn new ideas and take them back with you to Switzerland and practice them in your learning environments.

In collaboration with Movetia, we are organising a webinar for students, lecturers and researchers at any of the Universities of Teacher Education (UTEs) and for practising teachers and lecturers to experience a range of different teaching methods and subjects in an ecosystem where education is the defining factor for young people to gain upward social mobility. This webinar is also for companies and Vocational Education Training (VET) institutes interested in expanding the horizons of their apprentices by way of new cultural experiences that would expose them to international working environments.

This webinar is an opportunity to know more about working in India—a country that is already experiencing the effects of climate change and responds with innovative and immersive ways of teaching and learning to prepare students for a future where knowledge from text books may not be enough.

What you can expect

Professionals and educators who have lived and worked in India in different environments and have developed climate and nature-based learning curricula, a foundation that works with government schools across India to upskill teachers in innovative ways in a demand-heavy and resource-scarce environment as well as researchers who work to better understand teaching and learning in India. This is a chance to be truly inspired to make education more engaging through unconventional methods.

Agenda

(All times in CET)

1:00pm – Welcome and framing by Jonas Brunschwig, CEO Swissnex in India and Monika Wohlhauser, Lead strategic projects Movetia
1:10pm – Inputs from Indian and Swiss stakeholders of the education and VET sector
1:40pm – Q&A

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iCal / Outlook

Event start time

Global
3:00PM

International cooperation and exchange for education

Swissnex and Movetia are working together to facilitate and support mobility and cooperation projects outside of Europe for Swiss educational institutions. The six Swissnex main locations offer Movetia stakeholders a range of services, including matchmaking, workshops, scouting activities, and project facilitation. Read more here.

Speakers

Bio

Monika Wohlhauser
Lead, Strategic Projects, Movetia
With a background in sociology and international relations, Monika has worked in the field of international cooperation in education for more than 10 years. She has been part of the Movetia team since its launch in 2017 and has been involved in different sectors. Now she is responsible for strategic projects and partnerships.
Bio

Jonas Brunschwig
CEO, Swissnex in India | Consul General of Switzerland
Jonas is the CEO of Swissnex in India and the Consul General of Switzerland, where he connects Switzerland’s education, research and innovation ecosystems to those in India with the aim of fostering activities that pursue inclusive prosperity, urgent progress and a vibrant exchange. Prior to joining the team in India, he led Swissnex in Boston’s academic portfolio for six years. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he studied innovation ecology, with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. He also held positions at MIT in fundraising, at the Boston Global Forum in international affairs, and at Uncharted Play (now Uncharted Power) in social entrepreneurship. Before moving to India, he has lived in Switzerland, Egypt, Argentina and the United States.
Bio

Vena Kapoor
Nature Education | Conservation Science | Ecology
Vena is a nature educator and conservation practitioner. She founded Nature Classrooms in 2018 to design locally-culturally relevant nature learning modules, and facilitate immersive training workshops to connect teachers and educators to ecology and the natural world and to guide them to integrate nature learning as part of everyday curricula. She integrates her love for insects, spiders, and community engagement to rekindle and reimagine nature education in India.
Bio

Jagannath Raju
Founder and CTO, Systemantics India
Jagannath is the Founder and Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of Systemantics India, a collaborative robotics company based in Bengaluru. He oversees the company’s product development and technology strategy. His expertise encompasses mechanical design, actuators and sensors, computer control, signal and power electronics, and embedded and application software. He is an alumnus of IIT Madras, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Bio

Jitandra Sharma
Specialist, Azim Premji Foundation
Jitandra Sharma has been working with the education team of Azim Premji Foundation (APF) since 2011. Before APF, he worked as a teacher and a school principal in an alternative NGO run elementary school for five years. In the last 14 years, he has closely worked with the public education system—developing and conducting capacity building programmes for teachers, school principals and senior education functionaries. Part of his current responsibility is to coordinate internal capacity building and material development, and he also works with nine Azim Premji School principals for school improvement. He has two post graduate degree—one in English (Garhwal University, Uttarakhand) and the other in Education (University of Sussex, UK).
Bio

Nirmitha Damit Rulak
Chef, Damith's Kitchen
Nirmitha Damit Rulak lives in Switzerland. Four years ago, he turned his passion of cooking to a career as a chef. He studied at the Young People’s Talent Programme (YAT) at the Allgemeine Berufsschule Zurich (ABZ), where he built a strong foundation in the culinary arts. After that, he participated in the NextStep Program offered by the Cantons of Vaud and Zurich and Swissnex in India, which helped him gain further expertise and practical experience as a chef in Bengaluru. For three months in 2025, he worked as a Demi Chef de Partie at The Dolder Grand Hotel in Zurich. Alongside this, he started his own catering service, where he brings his passion for food to private events and special occasions. He is committed to perfecting his craft and exploring new flavours.