Host City India: New York

Payoshi Roy

Ms. Payoshi Roy has practiced as a criminal defense lawyer since graduating from National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata in 2015. Her practice focuses on representing prisoners on death row and indigent persons sentenced to life imprisonment before the Supreme Court of India and the Bombay High Court. In defending activists and terror accused, she has contested state excesses and abuse of anti-terror legislations in India. She also represents victims in custodial death cases challenging police impunity to ensure prosecution of police officers. Outside of courts, she has taught courses on capital punishment and criminal law in law schools across India.

Through her master’s in law as a Fulbright-Nehru fellow, Ms. Roy is undertaking comparative interdisciplinary research on sentencing, abuse of anti-terror laws, and institutional reform.

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.

Aesha Datta

Ms. Aesha Datta graduated in English literature from Hindu College, University of Delhi in 2008 and went on to study journalism at the Asian College of Journalism. She has been a journalist for over 12 years and has worked with publications such as ET Prime, The Hindu Business Line and the India Today Group. Her writing has focused on the intersection of the climate crisis and its impact on society. In her last stint as an Assistant Editor – Environment with ET Prime, she single-handedly steered the environmental and climate coverage for the publication.

In 2017, she was awarded the WWF-India Young Media Climate Fellowship, during which she reported from the Sundarbans and Ladakh on climate-linked migration and community-led climate adaptation.

Her experiences with climate impacts as an environmental journalist, and prior to that as a volunteer for organizations such as Greenpeace India, drives her to keep a people-first approach to her writing and to connect the dots between climate science, policy, economics, and community impact.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow at Columbia University, she is studying the convergence of climate science, equity, policy, law, and business. Upon returning to India, she intends to continue to communicate the ever-intensifying climate crisis and expects that her master’s degree will both improve her understanding of the subject and her ability to articulate the same. She wants to combine her years of practical, on-ground experience with the academic training she receives to work in the public policy and advocacy space.

Zubin Dash

Mr. Zubin Dash is an advocate practicing at the Supreme Court, various High Courts, and Tribunals in India since 2016. He has been involved in constitutional and criminal litigation for the enforcement of fundamental rights and civil liberties. He is the youngest researcher to have been awarded the prestigious Lok Sabha Research Fellowship by the Speaker of Parliament and has authored a book on privacy laws in India. He appeared before a Parliamentary Committee, submitted reports, and assisted Parliamentarians with legislative-drafting and policymaking in the areas of privacy law, data-protection, and surveillance-reforms. Previously, Mr. Dash was consulted by the government for suggesting legislative amendments relating to national security. He also worked as Research Assistant to a former Supreme Court Judge.

Mr. Dash graduated from the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) with a gold medal for successfully representing India at the Jessup International Moot-Court Competition, Washington DC, USA and was adjudged ‘Best Speaker’ at a similar competition. He has completed courses from the Hague Academy of International Law and ISIL and is a member of the American Society of International Law and the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association. He was on the editorial boards of the NUJS Law Review and the National Police Academy Criminal Law Review and has seven publications to his credit.

During his LLM at Columbia University, Mr. Dash will focus on constitutional law, civil liberties, and criminal justice. In particular, he plans to study how technology impacts the enjoyment of rights, the changing relationship between the state, citizens, and corporate entities, and comparative constitutional theory.

Aananth Daksnamurthy

Mr. Aananth Daksnamurthy is currently pursuing writing, translation, and title acquisitions as a freelancer. As a literature connoisseur, he is closely following the broad contours of Indian vernacular publishing.

His foray into writing happened when he joined the founding team of a Delhi-based news organization, The Print. In his professional journey, he has gathered various experiences in the publishing industry, from a business analyst to a contributing journalist. For a brief period, he was also engaged by the Editors Guild of India. As part of the team that built India’s first academic fellowship for lawyers, he has dabbled in the Indian higher education space for a while. In his latest stint, Mr. Daksnamurthy was a consultant with the Government of Tamil Nadu, leading their media team for the Industries Department. On several occasions, he has also had the privilege of drafting speeches for the Chief Minister and senior bureaucrats.

Born in Tiruchirappalli, Mr. Daksnamurthy graduated with a B. Tech in mechanical engineering from SASTRA University. He also has a postgraduate diploma in liberal arts from Ashoka University as a Young India Fellow. He is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and a Climate Reality Leader.

A graduate program in publishing as a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow will not only help Mr. Daksnamurthy excel in key publishing business functions but also open doors to a vast network of industry executives, publishers, and editors. His objective is to build a space for vernacular languages in public discourse within India and the world.

Soumya Anakkavur Katchi

Ms. Soumya AK graduated in 2018 from National Law University, Delhi. She worked in a leading all service firm before shifting to a criminal justice reform and litigation center, Project 39A where she has worked for over two years on issues pertaining to mental health and criminal justice in India. As part of her work, she has also worked on death penalty cases with mental health concerns. She has also developed a first-of-its-kind course on forensic mental health in collaboration with Monash University at Australia. Currently, she is working on an empirical study on the insanity defense in India and leads the communications and outreach work at Project 39A.

At Columbia University, she is specializing in the domain of criminal justice and human rights, with a specific focus on examining institutional barriers and development of access to justice mechanisms for the vulnerable and marginalized, from the perspective of the right to a fair and just trial. On returning to India, she intends to continue with her focus on these issues and expects that the master’s degree will inform and enable both her research on these issues as well as advocacy and capacity building with the stakeholders in the criminal justice system.

Sharmistha Saha

Sharmistha Saha is assistant professor of Performance Studies at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai. She completed her PhD from the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at the Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany. Erasmus Mundus followed by the German Research Foundation (DFG) funded her doctoral study. Later, she was a DFG postdoctoral fellow at Dahlem Research School, Berlin, Germany. She has been a UGC Junior Research Fellow at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. In the past she has been a Becas MAEC-AECID fellow at the Universidad de Granada, Spain. Her research interests include theatre historiography, performance philosophy, colonial theatre, theories of acting, aesthetics and politics, archive and the arts and critical theory. She is the author of Theatre and National Identity in Colonial India: Formation of a community through cultural practice (Springer/Aakar, 2017). Sharmistha is also a theatre practitioner and some of her directorial work includes ‘Playing to Bombay’ co-created with Sunil Shanbag, ‘Her Letters’ commissioned by the Tagore Centre in Berlin, ‘Romeo Ravidas aur Juliet Devi’ amongst others. She most recently was part of the international inter-medial project ‘Elephants in Rooms’ facilitated by the German-UK based Gobs Squad Arts Collective. She has closely worked with the theatre stalwart Eugenio Barba and his company Odin Teatret in Denmark.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellowship Sharmistha will be working on the project ‘Community identity, cultural performance and value: politics of intercultural exchange between the ‘west’ and postcolonial India’ at the TISCH School of the Arts, New York University. Her work will focus on politics of community identity, cultural performances as inheritance and its associated value in the context of ‘intercultural theatre’.

Ritu Sain

Ms. Ritu Sain is a seasoned administrator currently leading the National Anti-Doping Agency in Government of India. In her two-decade long career in the Indian Administrative Service, she has held many challenging assignments and has been credited with several innovative solutions to complex problems being faced by marginalized communities. She is known for her work in areas affected by left wing extremism, where she played a key role in mobilizing women into 10,000 + robust community institutions (self-help groups) for social change.

Her earlier assignments as a young head of administration in the districts of Surguja and Korea saw her introduce several initiatives to enable even the most vulnerable to avail program benefits with ease. Her contributions in the field rural sanitation, healthcare, education, and livelihood are considered to have made lasting impact in the state of Chhattisgarh.

Her path breaking and now much admired and replicated waste management model in Ambikapur has relevance to small cities in other parts of the developing world. The centrality of women collectives in this model has led to gains in women empowerment over and above what has been achieved through better sanitation.

She has served in policy making roles in Government of India. During her tenures in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports she was instrumental in bringing out large scale change through inclusive public policies and stake holder participation.

She has been awarded the President’s Medal for Outstanding Zeal and High-Quality Service and Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration for outstanding contribution in public service delivery.

Ms. Sain is a Draper Hills Summer Fellow (Stanford University) and a Chevening Gurukul Fellow (University of Oxford). She holds an M. Phil degree in Southeast Asian Studies and MA degree in Politics with specialization in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

As a Fulbright-Nehra Masters fellow, Ms. Sain is pursuing public policy at Columbia University to sharpen her skills in policy analysis and implementation. She believes this experience will offer her global exposure, help her connect with a network of professionals and learn rigor required in her policy making roles in the government. Upon returning to India, she plans to contribute to inclusive governance by empowering the vulnerable population through quality education and access to livelihood opportunities and healthcare.

Nikita Agarwal

Ms. Nikita Agarwal is a lawyer, policy practitioner, and community educator. She started out as a policy practitioner in 2013, focusing on addressing the food security crisis and gender-based violence in India, and built her legal practice to bridge the gap between the theoretical and practical applications of law. She has primarily represented indigenous communities in the conflict zone of South Chhattisgarh, and women, children, and religious minorities in Delhi.

Ms. Agarwal was appointed member of the Committee Against Sexual Harassment of the Chhattisgarh Bar Council. She regularly drafts workplace sexual harassment policies and is a gender and sexuality trainer. Through her research and documentation work, she has engaged with issues around labor, conflict, gender and sexuality, forest rights, and the criminalization of the lives of indigenous people and de-notified tribes, among others.

Ms. Agarwal is a graduate of National Law University, Delhi. As a student, she founded the student volunteer group Aaghaaz to provide need-based education to women and children on campus and outside. She simultaneously became involved with the Narmada Bachao Andolan, a people’s anti-displacement resistance movement in Madhya Pradesh, which helped her understand the need to work with law in a holistic manner—synergizing reform processes, litigation, and community mobilizing.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellowship, Ms. Agarwal aims to study the U.S. criminal justice and legal aid systems. After completing her fellowship, Ms. Agarwal intends to build a practice with community lawyers and paralegals, to addresses the crisis of legal aid in India.

Sreerupa Bhattacharya

Ms. Sreerupa Bhattacharya is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, where she examines the works of women photographers in twentieth-century India. By tracing a genealogy of women’s photographic practices, her Ph.D. seeks to explore hitherto obscured archives in order to engender the history of photography in India as well as provide fresh insights into the gendered lifeworlds of women in the twentieth century. Her research interests include visual culture, gender studies, technology studies and South Asian history.

Ms. Bhattacharya completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies in English literature at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, where she was awarded the Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (Sylff) for an independent research project on the Jewish community of Kolkata. She was a Young India Fellow at Ashoka University, where she received a postgraduate diploma in liberal studies. She also worked as Teaching Assistant at Ashoka University and IIT Bombay for a range of courses on gender and sexuality, film studies, literary culture and language training.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, she is undertaking archival research, gaining interdisciplinary methodological insights into the study of visual culture, and engaging with a global community of scholars and curators working on gender and photography.