University of Michigan Archives

Shekha Kotak

Shekha Kotak is a sixth year PhD candidate in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. She works on the intersection of caste, translation studies, and the history of emotions. She completed her bachelor’s in English literature from Rutgers University, New Jersey. Shekha has over nine years of tutoring and teaching experience. She has taught a range of subjects such as K-12 English and history, college-level research writing, SAT and TOEFL English, and beginner’s English to immigrant children. As part of her PhD requirements, Shekha has taught bachelor’s courses on topics such as Buddhism and Asian studies. She is also an avid translator, translating from and into Gujarati, Hindi, and English. Her translation of the Dalit author Ajay Navaria’s short story is forthcoming in the Granta magazine. When not immersed in academic research, Shekha spends time reading novels, literary magazines and blogs, and occasionally writing on various subjects.

Shekha’s Fulbright-Nehru research is focusing on emotive world-making in Hindi and Gujarati Dalit literatures and in their English translations. The research is delving into both print and digital literary canons, and studying Dalit texts across languages and media to reveal the critical language of emotions and the range of feelings they generate. Shekha’s work is attempting to heed the call of Dalit authors who urge for a different paradigm of literary aesthetics to critically engage with Dalit literature – they are not in favor of emotions such as grief, fear, love, joy, and rage being taken for granted, but advocates for interpreting Dalit interiority in literary writings through the lens of Dalit pain and consciousness.

Anjali Brown

Anjali Brown is an honors graduate of the University of Michigan, where she earned a BA in philosophy while completing a rigorous pre-medical curriculum. A multiple-year James B. Angell Scholar, Anjali pairs humanistic inquiry with empirical research to address global mental health inequities. At Michigan Medicine, she worked under Dr. Maria Muzik on the NIH-funded prenatal stress and postpartum studies, performing EEG acquisition, clinical intakes, and longitudinal data analysis on mother–infant dyads. Previously, she had co-led a 3,000-participant wearable-sensor study of resident physicians in the Sen Lab to produce actionable insights into disability and burnout in medical training.

Beyond the laboratory, Anjali directs evidence-based service initiatives. As a peer counselor, she delivers one-on-one psychological support to fellow students, and as the volunteer team lead for Michigan Medicine’s Hospital Elder Life Program, she trains volunteers and designs engagement protocols that reduce delirium and isolation in older inpatients. She has also co-developed a biodegradable menstrual pad for women in rural Peru. Anjali has won top honors at the Center for Global Health Equity pitch competition and has authored an illustrated menstrual-health guide for girls at the Chinmaya Vijaya Orphanage, Andhra Pradesh, India.

Anjali aspires to become a psychiatrist-researcher who integrates culturally responsive clinical practice with policy-relevant scholarship to advance maternal mental health worldwide.

Anjali’s Fulbright-Nehru project is investigating how maternal depression shapes mother–child interactions in urban India during five years of the postpartum period. Working with Dr. Prabha Chandra at NIMHANS, she is coding and statistically analyzing 300 video recordings from the Bangalore Child Health and Development Study to illuminate how maternal depression shapes mother–child interactions. She is also holding caregiver interviews to supply the sociocultural context. In parallel, she is conducting a systematic study on adolescent perinatal mental health and the impact of neighborhood violence during pregnancy in order to identify policy gaps. Her findings will inform culturally attuned interventions that strengthen community-based maternal mental health services in low-resource settings.

Sahita Manda

Sahita Manda is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health with a BS in public health sciences and a minor in biochemistry. She has had a longtime interest in working with people with disabilities, both through her research exploring stigma and neurodiversity as well as through her volunteer work. Sahita is also greatly interested in health policy and has interned at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. She hopes to pursue a career as a physician by integrating the principles of medicine and public health.

For her Fulbright-Nehru fellowship, Sahita is conducting nine months of research at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bengaluru, India. She is exploring parental perspectives and experiences related to seeking clinical and non-clinical services for adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD); she is also examining the navigation of the physical, sexual, cognitive, social, and emotional changes that come with adolescence. Sahita is also studying the lived experiences of adolescents with ASD. Using aggregated data from semi-structured interviews, she is identifying the current gaps in services and opportunities for this population, with the eventual goal of informing the development of culturally appropriate, holistic care.

Anmol Ghavri

Anmol Ghavri is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a 2023-2024 US Fulbright-Nehru Scholar affiliated with the Centre for Historical Studies at JNU. He focuses on the history of modern South Asia as well as global histories of capitalism, political economy, and economic life. He is especially interested in the history of India’s modern market economy and society. At Michigan he has been an instructor in courses covering all periods of South Asian history. His Fulbright and doctoral research is on the history of vernacular capitalism and enterprise of agrarian communities in north India adapting to the uneven economic transformations of the twentieth century. It seeks to pluralize our understanding of the lineage of capitalism and the institutions, contradictions, and contestations characteristic of modern India’s economy. He received his BA in History from Dartmouth College with High Honors in 2018 and master’s degrees from Columbia University and the London School of Economics in 2020.