Ms. Anjana Manoj Nair is a PhD candidate in the Department of History, School of Social Sciences, at the University of Hyderabad. She completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from the University of Delhi. Anjana’s current research focuses on transgressions and deviance, examining their codification within normative Sanskrit theological discourses and parallel contestations within narrative literary traditions across a historical continuum.
Anjana has been an ICSSR grantee under the International Collaboration Data-Collection Scheme in 2025, and a Getty grantee in 2024 for attending the 36th Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art held in Lyon. Alongside presenting her research at international academic forums such as the 28th European Conference on South Asia Studies in Heidelberg, and the 13th International Convention of Asia Scholars in Surabaya, she has also published in multiple reputed journals.
As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellow, Anjana is conducting her research in the Department of Asian Studies, College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Her project employs an innovative methodological framework that integrates quantitative techniques for terminological frequency analysis of spatial categories with qualitative archival research, supported by digital humanities tools and a database of rare manuscript variants housed in U.S. repositories. Moving beyond prevailing notions of ‘status’, ‘dignity’, and ‘reputation’ as analytical parameters, Anjana examines social hierarchies and spatial marginalization through the conceptual lenses of ‘deviant spaces’ and ‘spatial outliers.’ In her spare time, Anjana enjoys birdwatching, wildlife safaris, trekking in the Western Ghats, and underwater diving.