Host City India: Austin

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.

Shreya Chakraborty

Shreya Chakraborty is a Ph.D. candidate at the Indian Institute of Science Bengaluru. Her doctoral thesis focuses on understanding genetic architecture of manifestations of neurodegenerative diseases, with a specific focus on human cognition, considering age-associated metabolic risks. She has publications in peer-reviewed international journals with high reach and has presented papers at national and international conferences. She is a recipient of the Prime Minister Research Fellowship from the Government of India, which funds her research at IISc Bangalore.

Shreya holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in statistics from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata and the University of Calcutta. She received the South-East Asia Subsistence fellowship for securing the highest marks at the undergraduate level in her university. Before starting her doctoral studies, she worked as an analyst at Marketing Management Analytics, Ipsos Research Pvt. Ltd.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Shreya is focusing on building statistical models that enhance the translation of genetic risk prediction (polygenic risk portability) of cognitive decline across diverse contexts, taking underlying genomic architecture and interactions into account. Since polygenic risk score prediction has direct clinical utility, drawing context-specific predictions, would form a knowledge base for specific target genetic regions for accelerated cognitive decline during aging. Apart from research, she takes a great interest in participating and organizing cultural events, especially when they involve music. Shreya loves spending time with her friends and family, and also enjoys travelling and meeting people from various cultures.

Miriam Chandy Menacherry

Miriam Chandy Menacherry, filmmaker and founder of Filament Pictures, is known for her documentary films which celebrate everyday heroes, such as Stuntmen of Bollywood (2005), Robot Jockey (2007), The Rat Race (2011), Lyari Notes (2015), The Leopard’s Tribe (2022) and From the Shadows (2022). She was a Global Media Makers fellow (instituted by Film Independent) and a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television) India fellow. She is also a masterclass panelist at IFFI on “Indian documentary on the World Stage”.

Miriam has completed her postgraduate degree from the AJK Mass Communication Research Center, New Delhi. Her social documentaries shed light on invisible narratives to construct a complex reality overlooked by mainstream media, and they have been selected at leading film festivals and broadcast worldwide. Her films have also been screened in educational institutes in India and abroad such as IIT Mumbai, Mount Carmel College, AJK Mass Communication Research Center, New York University, the University of Texas at Austin, Oxford University, and SOAS.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence (Research and Teaching) fellowship at the University of Texas, Austin, TX, Miriam is engaging with students of film to develop a dialogue about critically important yet invisible stories from India and expand the scope of her research supported by the India Foundation for the Arts to visibilise the contribution of women in cinema to include parallel developments in Hollywood.