Prof. Bijayalaxmi Nanda, Principal of Miranda House and Professor of Political Science, is a distinguished academic leader and scholar. A recipient of the ICSSR Doctoral Fellowship and the Delhi University Vice-Chancellor’s Teacher’s Excellence Award (2017), she has been honoured with several prestigious honours, including the Kamala Power Women Award (2024), Shiksha Seva Samman by Delhi Teacher’s University (2024), and the Aalekh Foundation Women Achiever Award. She also received the Pt. Deendayal Upadhya Excellence Award (2019) and the Best Principal Award by National Edu Trust of India for her commitment to promoting Sustainable Development Goals in education. During her tenure, Miranda House has ranked among India’s top colleges under the National Institutional Ranking Framework for nine consecutive years.
Field of Study India: Higher Education Administration
C.T. Aravindakumar
Prof. C.T. Aravindakumar is the Vice-Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala (since 2023) and a Senior Professor at the School of Environmental Sciences. He has over 400 publications in international journals/conference proceedings. He was the team leader of India’s Arctic Expedition in July 2017. He was the Chairman of the Examination Reform Commission (Govt of Kerala, 2021). During his tenure as Vice-Chancellor, the University bagged A++ from NAAC, Category 1 institutional status from the UGC, 43rd position (and 17th in State University category) in NIRF and Global ranking (TIMES) 501-600. He has been a visiting professor/scientist at reputed universities and research organizations in 17 countries across Europe, the USA, Australia, and Asia.
Shivangi Sharma
Ms. Shivangi Sharma is the General Manager (Programs) at Kautilya School of Public Policy in Hyderabad, where she oversees program design, curriculum development, academic and industry partnerships. She has co-developed and facilitated the adaptation of the Stanford Interpersonal Dynamics T-Group course for Indian classrooms. She has been associated with Kautilya since its founding in 2021, serving as Executive Assistant to Dean, Program Manager and General Manager.
Shivangi is a first-generation college graduate from a farming family of Ashoknagar district in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Mathematics from Rajdhani College, University of Delhi and an MA in Liberal Studies from Ashoka University, where she was also awarded a Young India Fellowship. She also holds a senior diploma in Kathak from Gandharva Mahavidyalaya.
As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellow, Shivangi is pursuing an MA in International Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. Her studies focus on global and comparative education policy and economics of education. She plans to strengthen international collaborations in Indian higher education and build institutions that are accessible to students from underserved communities.
Blesson Mathew
Mr. Blesson Mathew is a governance and public policy professional working at the intersection of policy, diplomacy, and international development. A graduate of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, with a degree in English and political science, he went on to pursue a master’s in international relations and diplomacy on a Chevening scholarship.
With over a decade’s experience in public policy implementation, Blesson has worked extensively with the Government of India, particularly within the Ministry of Rural Development, driving large-scale development initiatives. He has contributed to India’s foreign policy engagements through his work with the Ministry of External Affairs, including in key divisions such as the G20 Secretariat. During India’s G20 presidency, he played a role in supporting negotiations around the New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration and was closely associated with the Trade and Investment Working Group and Startup20 engagement track.
Beyond government, Blesson has designed and led global fellowship programmes aligned with India’s Neighbourhood First policy. He has helped establish self-learning ecosystems across Rwanda and other parts of Africa, creating accessible, open spaces for youth-led innovation and skill development.
As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Blesson is now focused on integrating education policy with diplomacy to drive systemic change in India’s higher education landscape. His long-term vision is to build world-class academic institutions that advance the vision of Viksit Bharat and democratize access to transformative education.
Sheetal Mary Arockiamani
Ms. Sheetal Mary Arockiamani is a higher education professional based in Chennai, with extensive experience across diverse facets of the education sector. Over the past eight years, her work has encompassed pre-service teacher education, language and literacy program implementation for primary school students, and academic program management.
Sheetal has played a pivotal role in building two emerging higher education institutions in Tamil Nadu and has contributed significantly to shaping their academic journeys. As a founding team member at Sai University, Sheetal played a crucial role in establishing the Admissions Office and the Academics Office. At Vinayaka Mission’s Law School, she managed the Academics Office and facilitated a communication skills lab for students. Sheetal earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Anna University and completed the Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University.
As a recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowship, Sheetal is exploring the factors that drive student success in higher education. She is committed to fostering inclusive educational environments and creating impactful learning experiences that empower students to achieve their full potential.
Garima Shekhar
Ms. Garima Shekhar is the founder of Evolving Being, a liberal arts-focused admissions consultancy (www.evolvingbeing.org). TechnoServe India, in partnership with the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, selected her amongst the top 30 women entrepreneurs for an Accelerator Program in 2021.
In the past, she was a core member of the Founding Projects team that launched the undergraduate batch of Ashoka University, a pioneering Indian liberal arts and sciences university in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and Stanford University among others. She was on the interview panel, along with the founders and faculty of the university, to shortlist students for the undergraduate and postgraduate program, Young India Fellowship. She has also offered consultancy to the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). She has traveled extensively, met students from different walks of life, and discovered the transformative power of quality education.
Ms. Shekhar has studied Economics at Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi. She received full scholarship to pursue the Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University. At Welham Girls’ School, she scored the highest aggregate marks in grade XII and received several accolades: Academic Excellence Award by the Governor of Uttarakhand, the Khandelwal Shield for the Highest Aggregate, and the Faculty Trophy for Sustained Academic Excellence. When she gets time off work, she enjoys going on long treks, doing yoga, and learning new languages.
Through a graduate program in Education Leadership, Organization, and Entrepreneurship as a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, she hopes to support students around the globe in achieving their higher education goals.
Shivam Rawal
Mr. Shivam Rawal is a domain expert in education measurement, assessments and evaluation and has extensive experience in designing, implementing, and managing several large-scale education projects in India. He exhibits a deep passion and commitment to serve the public sector using grassroots insights. Mr. Rawal’s first-hand experience of educational inequality inspired him to join the Teach For India Fellowship, where he taught over eighty students in a low-resource government school in India. Leveraging this experience and creating an impact at scale, he has worked with multiple state governments, nonprofits, and schools to improve student learning outcomes through assessments and the capacity-building of stakeholders at Central Square Foundation and Educational Initiatives. Shivam was nominated as a Global Girls Education Fellow in 2020 by Teach For All, where he learned about best practices in girls’ education as a part of the global cohort of fellows committed to improving educational outcomes for girls and women.
Through the graduate program in economics and education at Columbia University, Mr. Rawal aims to create more inclusive and equitable education systems by strengthening the evidence-based policy practice and processes in India. Learning about quantitative methods, experiments, and data analysis will provide him with a solid methodological grounding for rigorous policy evaluations to improve education programs and interventions. Ultimately, the direct beneficiaries of his work will be education practitioners and policymakers, but the fruit of this investment through the Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowship will trickle down to millions of students and teachers in India.
Chelliah Thangaraj
Dr. Chelliah Thangaraj was the Director of the National Institute of Technical Teachers’ Training and Research (NITTR), Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, from April 2017 to May 2022. NITTR is an institution under the Indian Ministry of Education. At present, Dr. Thangaraj is an Honorary Distinguished Professor at the Vignan’s Foundation for Science, Technology and Research (VFSTR) in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. Before joining NITTTR, Bhopal, he was the Vice Chancellor at Vignan University. He was also the founding Vice Chancellor of Anna University of Technology, Chennai, a state public university in Tamil Nadu. He has been a Commonwealth Academic Fellow at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom; a DAAD Senior Fellow at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and a Visiting Scientist at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. He started his research career in water-power system planning using different techniques, such as, parallel processing, remote sensing, and GIS technologies. His current focus is on real-time system planning using big-data tools and machine learning algorithms. As the Director of NITTTR, Bhopal, he studied the impact of new teaching techniques to improve staff and student performance and the effect of government policy on engineering education in India.
Home Institution: Vignan’s Foundation for Science, Technology and Research (VFSTR) was established in 2008 and is the third oldest university in the state of Andhra Pradesh. In 2015, the institution received an A-grade by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, the highest body in India responsible for quality assurance of higher education institutions. The University received the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) recognition for five undergraduate engineering programs and was ranked in the top 100 for the university category by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), Indian Ministry of Education. The University offers undergraduate, MA and PhD programs in engineering, science, humanities, business, and pharmacy. Since 2020, the university runs an Institute of Law offering bachelor’s degrees and an integrated law degree.
Sulochana Shekhar
Dr. Sulochana Shekhar is the Head of the Department of Geography, and the Dean of the School of Earth Sciences, at the Central University of Tamil Nadu (CUTN), Thiruvarur, Tamil Nadu. Dr. Shekhar is the Registrar (in-charge) and has served as Coordinator of the Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC) and Presiding Officer of the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) at CUTN. Her field of research is urban geography and geographic information system (GIS) mapping. Her expertise is in applying geospatial technology in urban mapping, monitoring and management. She has guided five PhD research scholars in this area. She has participated in geography and geospatial science conferences in India and abroad, she has published more than 50 articles in national and international journals and authored three books.
Home Institution: The Central University of Tamil Nadu (CUTN) was established in 2009. The vision of the institution is to pursue excellence in teaching and research in science and technology, humanities, law, languages, social sciences, performing arts and sports. In 2022, the university was ranked 85 by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), Indian Ministry of Education. The institution has 27 teaching and research departments spread across 12 schools with 165 faculty members and 4 centers for teaching and research at its Main Campus in Thiruvarur. These schools offer 57 degrees, as well as a few diploma and certificate courses. Currently, the total number of students enrolled is 2,267 and there are 152 research scholars on campus.
Ruheela Sheikh Hassan
Dr. Ruheela Sheikh Hassan is a Senior Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST), Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir. She is both in charge of the Documentation, Printing and Publication Centre (DPPC) and the Media Advisor and Coordinator for Community Media and Community Outreach. Dr. Hassan has served as the Deputy Director of the Internal Quality Assurance Cell of the IUST. She started the first community newspaper and community radio station in Kashmir and is the founder-editor of the campus newspaper. In her role as a member of the Board of Studies and the Board of Research Studies at IUST, University of Kashmir and Cluster University of Kashmir, she has been involved in drafting the university statutes and curriculum. She regularly contributes Urdu entries to Media Dictionary, an online media literacy initiative. She has more than 20 research publications and she presented in more than 50 national and international conferences. She is associated with the Press Information Bureau, the nodal agency disseminating news from the Government of India to the media and for training journalists. She is also associated with the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT-J&K), an organization dedicated to training teacher educators. She has worked with organizations, such as Eenadu Television (a regional language television channel in Hyderabad), Child Rights and You (CRY), and the Agha Khan Development Network. She has submitted four research projects funded by the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR), National Council for Rural Institutes (NCRI), Jammu and Kashmir Directorate of Information and Public Relations and IUST.
Home Institution: The Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) is a state public university established in 2005. The university was ranked in the band “performer” category at the national level in the 2021 in the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievement (ARIIA), an Indian Ministry of Education initiative to rank all major higher educational institutions and universities in the country on indicators related to innovation and entrepreneurship development. The University has been rated as a high-performing institution in the implementation of Rashtriya Ucchatar Siksha Abhiyan (RUSA), a federal-aid program to boost the performance of state funded universities.