Mumbai Archives - Page 3 of 4

Adam Shaham

Hailing from New York City, Mr. Mr. Adam Shaham graduated with a Bachelor in Science in International Culture and Politics from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service in 2022. During his time at Georgetown, Mr. Shaham pursued his combined interests in public service and environmental stewardship in his work inside and outside of the classroom. His self-designed major focused on the intersection of international relations and climate change. Through the four-year Mortara Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Mr. Shaham conducted research on gender, education, and technology policy across the Middle East and was published in the International Journal of Education Development.

Off campus, Mr. Shaham completed internships at the U.S. Department of State and with Nancy Pelosi in the Office of the Speaker of the House. Mr. Shaham’s passion for environmental conservation also led him to volunteer more than 500 hours doing shore bank stabilization, invasive species removal, and fire clearance with AmeriCorps through Conservation Corps Minnesota and Iowa. Mr. Shaham was selected as a National Science Foundation REU intern at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) in Fall of 2021. While at BIOS, Mr. Shaham developed a species distribution model for coral fish species threatened by invasive lionfish utilizing machine learning software. In his free time, Mr. Shaham loves to run, read bad mystery novels, and devour bagels.

Mangroves serve vital ecosystem functions, including shore stabilization and carbon sequestration. In the last decade, there have been hundreds of mangrove restoration programs globally yet most restorations have failed for lack of community buy-in. Through the Maharashtra Mangrove Cell, 120 km2 of Mumbai’s mangrove habitats have been restored. In order for these restorations to succeed long term, Mr. Shaham’s Fulbright-Nehru project will evaluate the socio-ecological role of Mumbai’s mangroves to identify effective community conservation strategies. Through interviews at restoration sites, this project aims to gauge community perceptions of mangrove forests. Utilizing Maharashtra State Archive records, this project aims to study historic perceptions of Mumbai’s mangroves.

Abiola Makinde

Ms. Abiola Makinde is a Nigerian-American woman from Lagos and South Florida. As a recent graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design, she completed a senior thesis centered around Sickle Cell and Pain Management. As an Emergency Design Council Fellow she collaborated with designers from the IDC School of Design and the National Institute of Design in researching and designing solutions to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of children in India. Ms. Makinde has also served as a Design Educator for high school students in an after-school program, which focused on the fundamentals and importance of collaborating in the design thinking process.

Ms. Makinde’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining research design solutions to extend culturally relevant and adaptable hospital and home tools and services for Indian children with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) and their caretakers past the hospital and into their homes before and after visits. With the support of Prof. Ravi Poovaiah of The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Dr. Yazdi Italia of the Shirin and Jamshed Guzder Regional Blood Centre, her intention is to understand the patient’s journey and challenge points to find ways, through the lens of design, to positively affect the overall experience of the patient and the caregiver.

Meher Kaur

Ms. Meher Kaur is a graduate from the University of Richmond, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Global Studies with a concentration in Development Studies. During her time at the University of Richmond, Ms. Kaur’s studies and research focused in the areas of labor studies, gender studies, and economic empowerment in India. She wrote an Honors Economics Thesis on India’s biometric ID system – Aadhaar, and its ability to facilitate access to public welfare schemes and private services for India’s vulnerable population groups. She also wrote a senior thesis on the city of Gurgaon, India and how its social and urban development was impacted by India’s transition to a neoliberal state and economy. During her time at university, Ms. Kaur also lived in rural Odisha, India, for three months while working with the Indian NGO Gram Vikas to provide water and sanitation services to tribal populations in remote areas. She further studied abroad in Buenos Aires, Barcelona, and Cape Town as part of a multidisciplinary urban studies and economic development study program. Following graduation, Ms. Kaur worked with J-PAL South Asia as a Field Research Associate for a project based out of Punjab, India, where she studied drug use among Punjabi youth and developed and tested the effectiveness of a media awareness campaign. During this time, she realized her interest in the field of public health.

Ms. Kaur is interested in studying and building solutions to address gaps in India’s healthcare delivery systems, with a focus on women and disadvantaged population groups. She is passionate about community-driven research and hopes to grow her skillset through field research and networking with organizations in India’s social sector.

Maternal and reproductive health refers to the health of women before, during, and after pregnancy and the capability to make decisions to reproduce. Studies on Indian migration reveal that urban migrants often lack basic healthcare services, and emerging research in the era of COVID-19 shows that new barriers to healthcare access have formed. Ms. Kaur aims to use a mixed-methods and community-driven approach to bring the perspectives of underrepresented groups such as migrant women to the context of existing policies that cater to urban migrants’ health needs.

Rishabh Jain

Mr. Rishabh Jain graduated magna cum laude with Departmental Distinction in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University, where he was elected, in his junior year, to Tau Beta Pi. His research interests have spanned diverse fields, from bioengineering to technology policy to rural healthcare access. His senior thesis work as a Pratt Research Fellow consisted of designing a self-assembling, peptide-based supramolecular vaccine for Zika virus, for which he received the Howard G. Clark Award for Excellence in Research. He has also conducted research on injectable hydrogels for tissue repair after stroke as a Huang Fellow and has published on the pitfalls of thermal facial recognition during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Journal of Law and the Biosciences as a Bass Connections Research Fellow.

Mr. Jain is a contributor to the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s Editor’s Choice section and authored two chapters in an upcoming book on the ocular manifestations of systemic disease. He spent a summer interning at a CAR-T cell company and authoring an investment thesis on cell and gene therapy for a biotechnology-focused venture capital firm.

On campus, Mr. Jain served as Co-Founder and Co-President of the Duke chapter of Remote Area Medical (RAM), a national nonprofit that organizes free pop-up clinics to provide medical, dental, and vision care. With RAM, he led undergraduates and graduate students in multi-dimensional service, research, and advocacy efforts to improve healthcare access for underserved communities, culminating in the deployment of the first RAM clinic in North Carolina.

In his free time, Mr. Jain loves to cook and try new dishes. In 2019, he founded The Black Tile, a pop-up supper club where he served four-course tasting menus to six Duke students at a time. By donating profits to the local food bank, he has been able to provide almost 6000 meals to those in need. He also volunteered with Root Causes, an organization that delivers free, healthy food to food-insecure families.

India has the highest disease burden of uncorrected refractive error (URE) in the world, as measured by disability-adjusted life years. Refractive surgery has been able to vastly improve vision in patients with URE, but there are crucial decisions around the type and parameters of these surgeries that influence patient outcomes and affect postoperative complications. Mr. Jain’s Fulbright-Nehru project is focused on the use of artificial intelligence in refractive surgery, applying deep learning algorithms to the Indian population.

Aashish Kumar

Prof. Aashish Kumar (he/him) is a tenured Full Professor of Television and Immersive Media in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. His areas of expertise include documentary, interactive and immersive media, participatory media, and storytelling for social change. He is also the Founding Program Director of the Interdisciplinary Minor in Immersive Media, an innovative program launched in conjunction with departments from the Schools of Communication, Engineering and Computer Science, and Humanities, Fine, and Performing Arts.

Prof. Kumar is interested in emerging media forms that use innovative storytelling strategies to help people become more aware of internal diversities and the margins of their communities. To him, such an empathic understanding is key to forming broader solidarities and bridging the gap with “the other.” He is interested in how one’s process of capturing, representing, and distributing these stories can become integral to the overall intention of the storyteller. Prof. Kumar most recently launched an interactive documentary series focusing on the gender and sexual diversity within the South Asian diaspora in North America. Titled “Body, Home, World: South Asian LGBTQ+ Journeys,” the interactive online portal centers around narratives of LGBTQ+ identifying individuals and their families, allowing the viewer to navigate between these multiple viewpoints and to gain an understanding of the uniqueness as well as the interdependence of each experience.

Dr. Kumar is the recipient of two Fulbright Specialist awards (2016 and 2019) and a Fulbright Senior Scholar award (2008). In addition to teaching courses at all levels of the television curriculum he also serves on the Advisory Board of Hofstra University’s Center for Civic Engagement and the Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice.

Prof. Kumar earned an MFA in Television Production from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College, an MS in Radio/TV/Film from Indiana State University, and an MA and BA (Honors) in Sociology from the University of Delhi. He resides in New York City with his wife and son and enjoys playing the guitar and learning Hindustani Classical music.

Sexual minorities in India have made significant legal gains with two recent Supreme Court decisions – one that recognizes and protects the rights of transgender people and another that ends the criminalization of homosexuality. However, most LGBTQ+ activists contend that the campaign to change hearts and minds must take place over the long-term through the humanizing and normalizing of India’s LGBTQ+ community. Through his Fulbright-Nehru grant, Prof. Kumar proposes to capture the stories of families with LGBTQ+ individuals in short documentary films and make them available through an interactive online portal. These short films will center the experience of families as well as LGBTQ+ individuals, demonstrating that allyship and advocacy go together.

William Elison

Prof. William Elison studied at Williams College and received a PhD in the history of religions from the University of Chicago. He teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He specializes in Hinduism and related traditions as observed in India in the present day, mostly in vernacular languages, mostly among non-elite people.

As an urban ethnographer, he is committed to an ongoing program of research in the streets and poor neighborhoods of Mumbai. The first book-length product of this research, The Neighborhood of Gods, came out in 2018 from the University of Chicago Press. It examines how slum residents and other marginalized groups use religious images to mark and settle urban space. One of its main arguments is that sacred space is created according to a visual and somatic praxis observed across religious traditions. At the same time, it recasts, in a modern context, a question central to the history of Hindu thought: If the divine is manifest in the phenomenal world, then where and in what form do we recognize God? And with what sort of insight or authority?

Related research interests have included Adivasi (“tribal” or ST) communities; Indian slum neighborhoods and their village roots; and the mediation of darshan, or visual worship, by the movies and other technologies. From his student days, Prof. Elison has looked to Hindi popular cinema— “Bollywood”— for a window into modern Indian culture. His book on the landmark 1977 film Amar Akbar Anthony, coauthored with Christian Novetzke and Andy Rotman, was released in 2015 by Harvard University Press.

He has recently become interested in exploring the literary possibilities of ethnographic writing. His Fulbright-Nehru project this year intends to advance the next step in his fieldwork inquiry into religious life in Mumbai slum colonies.

A multisite ethnography of religious life in Mumbai slum communities. By “slum” Prof. Elison means housing consisting of unauthorized structures. Over half Mumbai’s population lives in such neighborhoods. By “religion” he means cults of local, territorial gods and divinized figures. This is a stratum of practice long associated with “village Hinduism” that Prof. Elison will demonstrate is a) observed in urban India; and b) not confined to Hindus. He will study gods as brokers of blessings and resources that flow into communities: vitality, cash, respect. Over a total of six months, Prof. Elison seeks to pursue simultaneous inquiries in three or more neighborhoods. His method is qualitative participant observation.

Vincent Kelley

Vincent Kelley is a PhD candidate in music studies at the University of Pennsylvania with interests in South Asian music, global jazz, social theory, music and religion, and the history of ethnomusicology. He received a BA in religious studies from Grinnell College in 2016 and an MMus in musicology and ethnomusicology from King’s College London in 2019. Vincent wrote his master’s thesis on the historical, aesthetic, and social relationships among the tabla, naqqara, and kathak performers in North India, which he is currently revising for publication. He has performed on drum set and tabla in jazz, Hindustani, and popular music settings in the United States and India. Vincent is also interested in Hindi, Urdu, and Persian languages and literature, and has received the American Institute of Indian Studies fellowship to study Urdu and the Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship to study Persian. Vincent’s PhD research focuses on the political economy and aesthetics of jazz, Hindustani music, and Indo-jazz fusion in the late-twentieth century.

Vincent’s Fulbright-Nehru project is investigating jazz in post-Independence India through the lens of the Jazz Yatra music festivals held in Mumbai and Delhi from 1978 to 2003. The Jazz Yatra promoted the interaction between Indian classical music and jazz, and became the longest-running jazz festival in the world outside of the United States and Europe. For the project, Vincent is employing oral historical, ethnographic, and archival research methodologies to understand how pivotal economic, political, and cultural transitions in late-twentieth century India and the United States were influenced by and through the Jazz Yatra festival.

Annika Agarwal

Annika Agarwal graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a major in anthropology in May 2023. While in school, she was the campus chairperson of Global Brigades where she organized menstrual products for communities in Honduras. She also founded Screen to Street, an organization that conducts home visits and educational programs for Latina women in their prenatal and postpartum periods. Besides, she worked as a birth doula at Magee-Womens Hospital, Pittsburgh, where she helped countless mothers during their birthing experience. One of her most valuable undergraduate experiences was developing her research skills and repertoire through Dr. Sara Baumann’s lab in Pittsburgh. During that time, she spent a summer in Mumbai, working with orphan girls to understand institutionalized menstrual practices, attitudes, and knowledge production. She has also worked on projects related to Collaborative Filmmaking, a participatory arts-based method, to understand the postpartum experiences of women in Pittsburgh. Annika will build on these experiences and skills through her Fulbright year. Ultimately, she hopes to attend medical school and continue her work on women’s health research globally.

Due to insufficient sanitary services, slum women in Dharavi, Mumbai, face a predicament. While they use dilapidated community toilets that make menstruation a communal issue, taboos perpetuate a clandestine culture. Of the sparse research that has been done on menstrual disposal, men and elders stand excluded. Therefore, this Fulbright study asks: “What are the attitudes, practices, and knowledge around menstrual disposal among men and women of different ages in Dharavi?” For her research, Annika is using Collaborative Filmmaking to co-create films on menstrual disposal with the residents. This study will contribute to the knowledge on differential bodily autonomy based on gender, a prominent issue in both the U.S. and India.

Nandini Deo

Dr. Nandini Deo is an associate professor of political science at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. She is the author of Mobilizing Religion and Gender in India, the co-author (along with Duncan McDuie Ra) of The Politics of Collective Advocacy in India: Tools and Traps, and has edited a volume called Postsecular Feminisms: Gender and Religion in Transnational Perspective. Currently, she is finishing work on a monograph on civil society and corporate collaboration in India. In 2022, Dr. Deo was awarded Lehigh’s highest teaching award. She is also an advocate of student collaboration in curriculum development and her latest interest is in unconventional educational experiments – unschooling and self-directed education.

In Mumbai, as part of her Fulbright-Nehru project, Dr. Deo is sharing findings from her research on the aftermath of the 2013 revisions to the Indian Companies Act which created a new arena of corporate social responsibility. These revisions require large corporations to donate at least 2 per cent of their annual profits to social causes and strongly encourage them to partner with NGOs. The result has been a huge influx of corporate funding and influence in the social inclusion and sustainable development spheres. Through her project, based on insights from business leaders, NGO activists, and the new intermediaries who connect them, Dr. Deo is showing that this influence is not reciprocal – that is, corporate social responsibility seems to change NGOs more than it changes the businesses involved in it. Besides, as an award-winning teacher, she is also sharing exciting pedagogical approaches with colleagues who want to explore “ungrading” and “student-centered” and “active learning” curriculum designs. She is expecting that her work will build connections with the faculty in India wherein an annual U.S.–India course can be created and co-taught which will benefit the students of both her home and host universities.