Home Institution India: Banaras Hindu University

Nijesh P

Mr. Nijesh P is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geology, Centre for Advanced Study, Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Nijesh specializes in hydrogeology. He is well-versed in hydrological field investigation, hydrogeochemical analysis, hydrogeochemical modelling, remote sensing and GIS, mineral identification and exploration, and geophysical survey. He has published papers in various reputed national and international journals. The most recent one deals with the study of isotopic characteristics and water quality with emphasis on fluoride in the water-scarce Lalitpur district of the Bundelkhand region in India.

Nijesh holds a master’s degree in Applied Geology from Anna University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, where he passed with first class. He has worked as a Junior Research fellow at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, before enrolling into his doctorate program. He is a hodophile and loves to explore new destinations. He also has a keen interest in music and is an amateur guitarist.

Nijesh is pursuing a doctoral program on “Hydrogeological and Isotopic evolution of springs and their management strategies in a micro watershed of Kosi River basin at Kumaun Lesser Himalaya Uttarakhand, India.” He is widening his research data and inferences further at Penn State University through the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship. The research opens a new door toward the methodologies and parameters used in hydrogeology for the study of springs.

Priyanka Chakraborty

Ms. Priyanka Chakraborty is a PhD candidate in the Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. She has submitted her doctoral thesis, which explores the pluralities of Tibetan identity and their articulation in contemporary Tibetan literature. She completed her master’s in English and Comparative Literature from Pondicherry University. She also holds a master’s degree in women and gender studies. She has presented her works in various international conferences and has been awarded best paper in two events. Last year, she attended the summer training school organized by Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on the Integration of Migrants in Europe at University of Tuscia, Italy. Her recent publication is a study of the journeys of texts and humans from India to Tibet.

Ms. Chakraborty has taught undergraduate and postgraduate students in two Banaras Hindu University affiliated colleges. As a faculty of English literature, she has taught several courses on poetry, drama, fiction, translation studies, gender studies and language. She regularly engaged her students in various academic and cultural activities. She is a trained Bharatnatyam dancer.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Ms. Chakraborty will teach Hindi at Wesleyan University, Connecticut. She will develop language adaptability of students through language usage in their respective cultural environment and uses blended methods of language teaching. As a cultural ambassador she will use every opportunity to familiarize the students with her culture while developing their language skills. She believes in an equal, inclusive, and multicultural society and preaches the goal of a symbiotic, holistic and eco-friendly existence.

Suparna Basu

Dr. Suparna Basu obtained BSc (Hons.) in Statistics from University of Calcutta in 2011, M.Sc. in Statistics from Banaras Hindu University in 2013. She obtained PhD in statistics in the 2018 from Banaras Hindu University under the supervision of Prof. Sanjay K. Singh. She was awarded with the BHU-CRET Fellowship, UGC-NET Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) and BSR-JRF during her PhD, although she had availed only the first two. Her thesis work was directed towards estimation techniques for various Time censored situations encountered in life-testing problems for two heavy-tailed distributions. Her research works have been published in journals of international repute. Dr. Basu has served as an Assistant Professor in the University of Burdwan during Feb. 2016 – Dec. 2019 and taught several courses to M.Sc. (Statistics) students, in addition to administrative and research endeavors. Thereafter, she joined Banaras Hindu University and has been actively involved in teaching, research and administration. She was awarded with the IOE-BHU, start-up grant of Rs. 6 lakhs in July, 2020.

Location-shifted Weibull, Gamma and Generalized exponential distributions, fails to meet an important regularity condition of the support being independent of unknown parameters. This impedes derivation of estimation techniques, especially those based on likelihood function like globally consistent estimators for complete/censored situation or any testing criterion to discriminate suitability of two competing models. Dr. Basu would explore some robust statistical estimation techniques for such non-regular distributions and illustrate its applicability on real data sets during her postdoctoral stint supported by the Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.

Vivek Singh

Dr. Vivek Singh is Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. He has taught several courses in English literature, language, and cultural studies at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels; and has taught research writing to Ph.D. scholars. He has also taught at the Department of English, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. After pursuing his M.Phil. from Pondicherry University, Puducherry, Dr. Singh joined EFL University, Hyderabad to complete his doctorate. His research interests include disability studies, cultural studies, English language teaching, and critical humanities.

Dr. Singh has delivered more than 20 invited lectures on various topics and published more than ten articles and academic papers. He has edited a book titled The Crisis of Humanity and his forthcoming books are in two languages: The Discourse of Disability: Indian Perspectives (English) and Post-truth (Hindi). For excellence in research, he received a DAAD fellowship.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Dr. Singh is teaching Hindi at Mississippi Valley State University, Mississippi. He is also studying the American social and cultural diversity and promoting Indian languages and cultures. In the classroom, he is engaging with critical pedagogy, which insists upon deliberation, critical judgment, and civic courage to celebrate pluralities as the essence of democratic thought.

Anil Kumar Tripathi

Dr. Anil Kumar Tripathi is Professor of Biotechnology and Director of the Institute of Science at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. At BHU, Dr. Tripathi was instrumental in establishing a DST-supported state-of-the-art Sophisticated Analytical Technical Help Institute (SATHI) and a BIRAC-supported Bioincubator for Nurturing Entrepreneurship for Scaling Technologies (BioNEST). Since their inception, he has served as Coordinator of both SATHI-BHU and BioNEST-BHU. Dr. Tripathi obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in botany from Banaras Hindu University and has published 92 peer-reviewed articles. His research focus on genetics, genetic engineering, systems biology, and synthetic biology of a plant growth promoting bacterium. He is a recipient of the prestigious J C Bose National Fellowship in addition to several other national awards and grants.

Shabana Bano

Dr. Shabana Bano is Associate Professor of Psychology at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, where she also received her Ph.D. She is the recipient of a National Scholarship awarded by the Government of India, a Shastri-Indo Canadian Faculty Mobility Fellowship, and a Witkin-Okonji Award. Her research investigates social identity, acculturation, mutual attitudes, psycho-social adaptation and intercultural relations among Indian Hindus and Muslims, with a special focus on how traditional Sanskrit and Quranic schools influence the psychosocial development of children and adolescents. Her work includes cross-cultural projects based in Canada, Switzerland and the USA, and she served as Visiting Fellow at the University of Guelph, Canada and Visiting Scholar at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. She is widely published nationally and internationally. Most recently, she co-edited the volume Understanding Psychology in the Context of Relationship, Community, Workplace and Culture (Springer, 2021).

Dr. Bano’s Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence project investigates the possibility that school attainment has consequences for the socialization of Muslim women’s identity and their psychosocial adaptation. Her project does a comparative study of religious Muslim schools and secular schools in the United States and in India. This project will help promote the development of gender equality attitudes and positive gender identity among young women through school attainment, whether religious or secular.

Sarvesh Pandey

Dr. Sarvesh Pandey is an assistant professor of computer science at Banaras Hindu University since November 2020. At BHU, he has been actively involved in teaching, research, and administration activities. Dr. Pandey obtained his MTech and Ph.D. degrees from the Computer Science and Engineering Department of Madan Mohan Malaviya University of Technology, Gorakhpur. His broad research areas include blockchains, cloud computing, and database systems. In 2014, he secured 33rd rank in the CSIR-NET examination for engineering sciences. Under the CSIR scheme, he worked as a Junior Research Fellow (JRF) and subsequently as a Senior Research Fellow (SRF) during his Ph.D. He has also qualified for the GATE entrance examination in computer science and information technology.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research fellow, Dr. Pandey will explore two crucial research directions: efficient data management utilizing blockchain technology, and blockchain application in crowdsourcing. As the current decentralized data processing and retrieval landscape is transitioning, his plan involves optimizing blockchain performance, specifically addressing query retrieval efficiency and facilitating rich queries. Additionally, he aims to incorporate access control mechanisms within the blockchain framework. The research outcomes will be seamlessly integrated into existing crowdsourcing applications, capitalizing on the strengths of both domains

Manvi Tandon

Manvi Tandon is a PhD candidate at the Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. She completed her master’s in English literature from Banaras Hindu University in 2022, following which she taught English at North-Eastern Hill University, Tura, Meghalaya for a semester as a guest lecturer. For her doctoral research, Manvi is studying narratives of relational childhood trauma. She is working in the area of childhood studies and is deeply interested in childhood ideology and child rights advocacy. Her academic interests include childhood narratives, translation, and popular culture.

Manvi studies Indian fiction for her doctoral thesis. She avidly participated in volunteering and social work during her undergraduate days through the National Service Scheme (NSS), and an internship at My Home India where she worked with ‘Children Under Need for Care and Protection.’

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Manvi is assisting with teaching Hindi at the Department of Asian Studies, the University of Texas at Austin, TX. She hopes to contribute to the university’s language programs and foster cross-cultural understanding. This opportunity will also allow her to immerse herself in American culture and share her knowledge of Indian life, to fulfill her role as a cultural ambassador.

Sneha Sharma

Sneha Sharma is a dedicated Hindi tutor from Jorhat, Assam. She completed her master’s in linguistics from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, where she received a gold medal for her academic excellence. She also holds a master’s in English from the University of Delhi and completed her undergraduate studies at Sophia Girls’ College, Ajmer, where she was actively involved in various co-curricular activities. Sneha was a vibrant member of the college comm unity, participating in the theatre society, volunteering for the National Service Scheme (NSS), and serving on the editorial board of the university magazine.

Sneha has a profound passion for folk songs, Indian mythology, and various Indian dance forms. She is currently training in the Indian classical dance form Kathak and has a two year diploma in the same. Her love for languages and cultures extends beyond her formal education; she hosts a podcast and maintains a blog trying to promote the use of Hindi in the social sphere. She also authored a research paper titled “Birds in Selected Folksongs of Rajasthan,” highlighting her deep interest in regional folklore and culture.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Sneha is teaching Hindi at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. She aims to inspire and educate by blending traditional and modern elements, making learning an enriching and enjoyable journey for all her students. She is also keen to imbibe the teaching pedagogy of the U.S. so that innovative ideas may be formed and utilized in her teaching career.

Ashutosh Kumar

Ashutosh Kumar is an Associate Professor of History at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. He earned his Ph.D. from the History Department of the University of Delhi, where he also taught from 2012 to 2014. He received South-South Exchange Program for Research on the History of Development (SEPHIS), a Government of Netherlands funded program Fellowship during his Ph.D. He was fellow at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom; Yale University, USA; Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi; the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi, and at Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. He is president of Indian Association for South Asian Studies (IASAS) and Chairman of Centre for Alternative Studies in Social Sciences, New Delhi.

His most recent publications include Coolies of the Empire: Indentured Indians in the Sugar Colonies, 1830-1920’, Cambridge University Press, 2017 and ‘Girmitiyas and Global Indian Diaspora: Origins, Memories and Identities’ Cambridge University Press, 2023.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence scholar, Dr. Kumar is exploring issue of rights of Indian indentured laborers on colonial sugar plantations during nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the letters, petitions and depositions of indentured Indian migrants with a particular emphasis on the letters they wrote in regional Indian language. His project analyses such laborers’ letters and makes the case that Indian indentured laborers were able to fight for their “rights”, natural and contractual with planters and the colonial government through petitions, in addition to being able to voice their feelings and concerns on a variety of other matters.