Field of Study USA: Anthropology

Siya Sharma

Siya Sharma is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she studied anthropology and human biology and society. During her time at UCLA, Siya immersed herself in years-long research at the university’s medical and sociocultural anthropology departments. Under the guidance of Dr. Daniel Fessler and Dr. Abigail Bigham, she has cultivated a research niche focusing on the genome sequences present in Indian populations which contribute to metabolic disorder and lifestyle health problems. Most recently, Siya spearheaded a study of key metabolic processes and their relation to adverse health outcomes associated with the consumption of refined flour in North India. These experiences have allowed her to reconceptualize how genetics plays a key role in the dynamics between individuals and their respective health outcomes. These days, Siya is focused on Indian women’s health outcomes and is also assessing epigenetic influences using laboratory, medical survey, and participant interview methods.

As a teenager, Siya fundraised for and purchased thousands of sanitary hygiene products which she distributed in local soup kitchens, food pantries, and food drives. She has also volunteered as a medical caseworker at UCLA Health. In her spare time, Siya led her university’s poetry and spoken word program. She also served as a lead editor and creative director of UCLA’s FEM Magazine, a publication dedicated to writing about campus life through a feminist perspective.

The polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a metabolic and reproductive endocrine disorder with no known cure. Some of the highest rates of this disease are among Indian women. In India, Ayurvedic conceptualizations of the menstrual cycle regularity causes PCOS diagnosis to be perceived as an energy imbalance within the body. Siya’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is examining the ideas of health and balance for women diagnosed with PCOS and also their respective social, cultural, economic, and political conditions. While studying the social perceptions and current medical approaches to treating this disorder, Siya is proposing a two-part PCOS management model which incorporates both Ayurvedic concepts and biomedical practices.

Christopher Gadomski

Christopher Gadomski graduated with a major in neuroscience and behavioral biology and a minor in religion from Emory University where he studied the epigenetic underpinnings of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. During his time there, he volunteered as an advanced emergency medical technician and also served as the technical director for Emory’s internet Radio Station, WMRE. Since graduation, he has been researching in the area of neuroimmunology of brain metastases using computational and in vitro techniques. He plans to pursue a career in medicine and increase healthcare accessibility for the marginalized communities.

For more than 60 years, the Tibetan people have lived in exile to escape forced secularization and preserve their way of life. And they have succeeded despite immense hardship, as illustrated by the fact that their unique culture and religious practices now thrive in Dharamshala and around the world. What underlies this resilience against persecution and displacement? Chris’s Fulbright-Nehru project is helping to document, preserve, and promote the oral histories of the Tibetan exile community. This documentation of life in exile – past, present, and future – may provide an insight into how to cultivate resilience in other refugee communities and instill the values of compassion and well-being in the face of hardship.

Mayukha Dyta

Mayukha Dyta is a bachelor’s student in the U.S. pursuing degrees in pre-medicine and sociology/anthropology. She is interested in methods of diagnosis and the malleability of biomedicine in the way it is taught in different cultures. She has previously worked in biomedical wet labs and conducted electrophysiology research on cardiomyocyte ion channels and yeast cell integrity. Mayukha has published a groundbreaking paper on the presence of BK channels in exosomes. She has also carried out ethnographic work in Indian medical schools. She is a youth delegate for the UN Program UNITE2030 and is the president of a number of clubs and organizations at the collegiate level whose mission range from promoting women in science to creating communities of like-minded individuals. In her free time, Mayukha likes to read, and enjoys the classics.

In her Fulbright-Nehru program, Mayukha is completing an anthropological ethnographic research project to understand how pluralistic patient populations affect diagnosis and treatment (or continuum of care). In addition, she is focusing on the difference between managing and treating patients in the culturally influenced style of biomedicine to understand the fluidity of the practice. The research is building on work in medical anthropology and sociological medical practices among pluralistic patient populations.

Avital Datskovsky

Avital Datskovsky is a PhD student in the Anthropology Department at Syracuse University. She holds a bachelor’s degree (2013) in South Asian languages and civilizations from the University of Chicago and a master’s degree (2018) in development studies with a focus on contemporary India from SOAS University of London.

Avital’s Fulbright-Nehru project is tracing human and animal inclusion and exclusion from the Ranthambore National Park (RNP), an Indian tiger reserve, established in the 1970s as part of India’s conservation program called Project Tiger. As the park has grown substantially in terms of its tiger population and as an ecotourist destination, communities reliant on the forest for their livelihoods have been excluded from the park. Avital’s ethnographic project is considering what different responses of humans and animals to the RNP as a protected area reveal about political, social, and economic formations in the area; it is also exploring what possibilities for conservation may emerge when the impacts of Project Tiger are studied in terms of human and animal relationality.

William Belcher

Dr. William Belcher is a forensic anthropologist and archaeologist in the School of Global Integrative Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). He manages the UNL Forensic Anthropology Research Laboratory as well as the undergraduate and graduate programs in forensic anthropology. Dr. Belcher consults and trains in identification efforts with local law enforcement within the State of Nebraska and beyond. Prior to coming to UNL in 2019, he retired as the deputy laboratory director of the US Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s Central Identification Laboratory where he conducted forensic investigation, recovery, and identification efforts to support the US mission of missing-in-action identification and repatriation to family members. His research has been featured in numerous academic conferences in the U.S. and South Asia and in several publications.

Dr. Belcher’s Fulbright-Nehru project’s main goal is to provide a framework for building up the forensic anthropological/archaeological capacity of the National Forensic Sciences University in Gujarat. This involves three academic courses – in human osteology, forensic anthropology, and a field course in forensic archaeology – and is set to culminate in a field exercise of approximately five weeks in the north-eastern region of India associated with a U.S. World War II-era aircraft incident. Currently, there is no curriculum in the Republic of India in terms of archaeological recovery and excavation associated with crime scene investigation.

Ricca Slone

Prof. Ricca Slone has been teaching graduate public policy courses in Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies for the past 12 years. Most recently, she taught an online course on Congressional procedure in Fall 2023. Before teaching at Northwestern University, Prof. Slone worked on water-supply issues for three years at the Environmental Law & Policy Center, a research and advocacy organization based in Chicago which works in several U.S. Midwestern states. From 1997 to 2005, Prof. Slone served four terms as a state representative in the Illinois House of Representatives, representing the 92nd district in central Illinois. She also chaired the Higher Education Appropriations Committee and was the vice chair of the Energy & Environment Committee.

As a senior scholar near the end of her working years, Prof. Slone hopes to rejuvenate the Sun Oven project by relaunching the assembling and marketing of solar ovens from a new location in Karnataka so that they can help women in South India who cook over wood fires.

Prof. Slone’s Fulbright-Nehru project is identifying strategies to overcome Indian cultural challenges to adopting renewable technologies. The framework for analysis is Nordgren and Schonthal’s friction theory (The Human Element, 2022). The project’s focus is on adoption of clean solar cooking by rural Indian women who otherwise cook over smoky fires, which is time consuming and causes respiratory diseases and deforestation. The research is a case study comparing the relative ease of adoption of the following technologies: wind turbines for energy; electric tuk-tuks for mobility; and solar ovens for cooking. Prof. Slone’s hypothesis is that cooking will encounter the most cultural resistance.

Urmila Mohan

Dr. Urmila Mohan is a public anthropologist of material culture and studies how sociocultural values are circulated through cloth, bodily practices, and belief. She earned a PhD in anthropology from University College London, an MFA in studio arts from Pennsylvania State University, a BA (hons) in anthropology from Victoria University of Wellington, and a BFA in communication design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

Dr. Mohan’s research includes an ethnography of devotees who make garments for their deities and also wear specific clothing; this was published as Clothing as Devotion in Contemporary Hinduism. She also undertook a curatorial study of Balinese ritual textiles at the American Museum of Natural History, resulting in an exhibition and catalogue, Fabricating Power with Balinese Textiles. Besides, she is the author of the monograph, Masking in Pandemic U.S..

Dr. Mohan has written extensively on material practices and theorizes them in her edited volume, The Efficacy of Intimacy and Belief in Worldmaking Practices. Earlier, she had co-edited The Material Subject: Rethinking Bodies and Objects in Motion and a special issue of the Journal of Material Culture titled “The Bodily and Material Cultures of Religious Subjectivation”.

As part of her commitment to interdisciplinarity, Dr. Mohan founded the digital, open-access publication, The Jugaad Project. She is also a member of several global working groups, including the Matière à Penser network for embodiment studies.

Dr. Mohan’s Fulbright-Nehru project is an ethnographic study of weavers of silk ikat (resist-dyed) textiles in Gujarat, India. She is contextualizing ikat handloom innovation as a process of socio-technical ‘enchantment’ that engages weavers, traders, and consumers. She is also connecting woven cloths’ agency with changing socioeconomic and spiritual practices via weavers’ technical, bodily, and material adaptations. Her research adds to studies of how artisanal communities and heritage are shaped in India; it is doing so by analyzing shifts in practices/meanings due to migration, the influence of kinship on technology adoption and craft expansion, changing roles of women in weaving families, and the effects of the geographical indications patenting system.