Host City USA: Mysuru

Purnima Madhivanan

Dr. Purnima Madhivanan is an Associate Professor in Health Promotion Sciences at the Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at University of Arizona, Tucson. She received her medical training at the Government Medical College in Mysore, India and then an MPH and PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Madhivanan has extensive experience in conducting multi-site domestic and international clinical and translational studies. She is the site PI and the Director of the Global Health Training Program at University of Arizona, Tucson for the Global Health Equity Scholar consortium in collaboration with Stanford, Yale and University of California, Berkeley. She also directs the Fogarty-Fulbright Fellowship program for University of Arizona. Dr. Madhivanan has been a PI of multiple federal and foundation grants, as well as a mentor and investigator of numerous NIH, CDC, and industry-sponsored studies and clinical trials. She has also served on multiple national and international research and steering committees.

Her research has focused on disadvantaged populations, elucidating the dynamics of poverty, gender, and the sociopolitical determinants of health, in particular the impact on women and children living in rural and limited resource communities. She has worked in India, Peru, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Nigeria, Ethiopia and in the US. To situate her research close to the communities she serves, she established a clinical site in Mysore, India in 2005 while completing her PhD dissertation. For over a decade, the Prerana Women’s Health Initiative has delivered low-cost, high-quality comprehensive reproductive health services to 50,000 low-income women living in Mysore.

Her work has resulted in more than 200 peer-review publications. She continues to develop novel lines of research and has been supported by foundations, biotechnology companies, federal and international funding organizations. Dr. Madhivanan serves as an advisor to a number of state departments of Public Health, non-profit as well as governmental research organizations. In 2007, she received the prestigious International Leadership Award from the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation for her work on HIV prevention. She is recipient of several teaching and mentoring awards including the Maria Valdez Mentoring Award at the University of Arizona

The overarching goal of Dr. Madhivanan’s Fulbright-Nehru project is to advocate for the medical and social needs of female cancer survivors and build capacity for research that will develop a survivorship care evidence base, explore strategies to facilitate provision of survivorship care, and disseminate best survivorship care practices to Indian physicians and public health practitioners. It is estimated that about 34,000 women are diagnosed annually with cancer in the south Indian state of Karnataka. Assuming an 81% overall five-year survival rate, the state would have more than 137,000 women cancer survivors in any year. In India, there is almost no active follow-up for patients who survive cancer treatment and there is limited information about their physical and mental health, and overall quality of life.

Karl Krup

Dr. Karl Krupp, MSc, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health Practice, Policy, and Translational Research in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona, Phoenix. He has been involved in implementation of public health interventions and research among at-risk disadvantaged communities in the U.S. and India since 2002. His earliest work focused on childhood asthma among African Americans living in public housing in Bayview– Hunters Point, San Francisco, and farmworkers in Central Valley, California. For the last 18 years, he has been working in India on the social determinants of health among rural and slum-dwelling populations. His research on HIV prevention, maternal health, primary and secondary prevention of cervical cancer, mental health, vaccine hesitancy, cardiovascular disease, and aging has been documented in more than 84 peer-reviewed publications like MMWR, AIDS, BMJ, Vaccine, International Journal of Cardiology, and Journal of Medical Microbiology.

Dr. Krupp holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Minnesota, a master’s degree in public health from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine at London University, and a PhD in public health from Florida International University in Miami. His dissertation research was titled “Prevalence and Correlates of Coronary Heart Disease in Slum-Dwelling South Indian Women”. The research was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the Fogarty International Center through a Global Health Equity Scholar Fellowship. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020, Dr. Krupp has been working on the psychological antecedents of COVID-19 vaccine intentions among adults in Arizona, the validation of microRNA panels for detection of breast cancer and cervical cancer in blood, and on the interventions to reduce symptoms of dementia in mildly cognitively impaired older adults.

By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will reside in cities where more than one in 10 residents are elderly. The WHO has called for age-friendly cities where older people can “age actively” with security, good health, and full social participation. Dr. Krupp’s Fulbright study is using mixed methods for a policy analysis to examine aging programs, built environment, and policies in Mysuru, India, and Stockholm, Sweden. The research is gathering data from key stakeholders, including city planners, service providers, and civil society leaders.

Audra Anjum

Dr. Audra Anjum is an instructional designer at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. She earned a PhD in instructional technology and an MA in applied linguistics, both from Ohio University, and a BA in English from Wilmington College, Ohio. Dr. Anjum’s teaching experience includes teaching undergraduate courses at Ohio University and at institutions abroad. She has taught in many different teaching modalities across different types of learners. Over the past decade of her professional practice, Dr. Anjum’s work as an instructional designer has mainly centered around faculty development and course design. She has delivered several faculty development workshops both in the United States and India, as well as collaborated with over one 100 faculty members and subject-matter experts on all or parts of hundreds of courses, seminars, and other transformative learning experiences.

Dr. Anjum’s primary research focus is on investigating the individual differences and factors that influence instructors’ decisions to use technology in university settings, wherein the integration of enterprise-wide solutions is implicitly mandatory. The impetus to pursue this line of research mainly stems from her efforts to reframe current approaches to faculty support initiatives with greater empathy, by leveraging differences among instructors’ varying coping responses to workplace stressors (like the use of technology) rather than through instructional best practices and institutional mandates. She is also involved in capacity-building efforts for promoting teacher training at Ohio University wherein she frequently collaborates with both pre- and in-service instructors across a wide range of disciplines who are interested in contributing to the scholarship of teaching and learning within their areas of expertise.

Dr. Anjum’s Fulbright-Nehru project is facilitating a capacity-building program for instructional design and faculty development at the JSS Medical College in Mysuru, India. She is carrying this out in collaboration with the faculty and administration. She is also teaching classes and opening up a series of professional development opportunities to enhance teaching practices and student engagement, with specific focus on topics such as technology use, accessibility and inclusivity, active learning strategies, and multimedia development.

Gil Ben-Herut

Dr. Gil Ben-Herut is an associate professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. He holds a PhD in religious studies from Emory University and a BA and MA from Tel Aviv University in Israel. His research interests include premodern religious literature in the Kannada language, South Asian bhakti (devotional) traditions, translation in South Asia, and programming in digital humanities.

His book, Śiva’s Saints: The Origins of Devotion in Kannada according to Harihara’s Ragaḷegaḷu (Oxford University Press, 2018), is the first study in English of the earliest Śaiva hagiographies in the Kannada-speaking region, and it argues for a reconsideration of the development of devotionalism as associated today with the Vīraśaivas. The book received the Best First Book Award for 2019 from the Southeastern Medieval Association and the 2020 Best Book Award from the Southeastern Conference of the Association for Asian Studies. Dr. Ben-Herut also received the Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Award from the University of South Florida for the year 2020.

Dr. Ben-Herut recently completed co-translating selections from the Ragaḷe hagiographical collection for a book-length publication (under review). This project is funded by the American Academy of Religion’s Collaborative International Research Grant. His publications include a co-translation of a twelfth-century Kannada treatise about poetics, encyclopedic entries, a co-edited volume, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Ben-Herut is the co-founder of the Regional Bhakti Scholars Network, a platform for facilitating scholarly conversations about South Asian devotional traditions.

Utilizing his extensive experience in computer programming, Dr. Ben-Herut also leads several digital humanities projects, including digital ROSES and BHAVA. He is a member of the Digital India Learning Committee of the American Institute of Indian Studies and an active collaborator in digital projects about South Asian texts and languages involving open-source and open-access environments.

The textual “biography” of the vachana corpus – an expanding collection of devotional and lyrical poetry in Kannada from the twelfth century – spans over several key moments in the history of South India, starting with an innovative devotional practice of personal oral proclamations and then developing into a written canon that served as the fulcrum for a new religious sect, until finally becoming a cultural tool for biting social critique in the modern period. Dr. Ben-Herut’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining how, nine centuries after their appearance, the vachanas became the most cherished literature in Kannada and an exemplar of sorts for spiritual poetry around the world.

Aditya Yelamali

Aditya Yelamali holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and anthropology with a concentration in global health and environment from Washington University in St. Louis. Throughout his academic journey, he has worked on a number of pursuits that aim to utilize scientific inquiry to make a longitudinal impact on research and public health efforts. He has conducted both clinical and translational research in hematology/oncology, with a focus on exploring innovative and less toxic conditioning strategies and compounds for blood transplantation; this has resulted in several publications and presentations. Aditya also founded and leads Hearts for Arts, an organization dedicated to providing healing and arts-based activities for children in the St. Louis area; this organization has forged partnerships with various establishments throughout St. Louis to make a positive impact on hundreds of youth and pediatric patients by providing spaces for healing and interaction, and also improving mental health through trauma-informed care. Aditya’s dedication to social justice and public health extended to his work as a St. Louis Fellow Scholar with the Gephardt Institute, where he spearheaded efforts to combat HIV-related stigma. Inspired by his experiences working with frontline HIV workers, Aditya’s senior thesis delved into the intricacies of care delivery.

Aditya’s Fulbright-Nehru Research project is focusing on understanding the barriers and decision-making factors that influence adolescents seeking mental healthcare in Mysuru, Karnataka. The project is addressing the lack of dialogue on mental health between parents and adolescents, particularly in culturally sensitive contexts. In collaboration with JSS Medical College, the study is exploring parental hesitancy and gender dynamics that affect adolescent mental healthcare access. Through qualitative research involving interviews with parents, educators, and adolescents, Aditya’s project is identifying the factors that perpetuate stigma, thereby informing interventions to enhance mental health literacy. This research will contribute to global discussions on adolescent mental health disparities and promote community-based approaches toward reforms.

George James

Prof. George James received his PhD in history and philosophy of religion from Columbia University in 1983. He served on the faculty of the University of North Texas from 1983 until his retirement and appointment as Professor Emeritus in 2020. In addition to his research on the activism and environmental philosophy of Sunderlal Bahuguna, titled Ecology Is Permanent Economy (State University of New York Press, 2013; Motilal Banarsidass, 2020; Hindi transl., 2022, Kannada transl., 2022), he is the author of Interpreting Religion (Catholic University of America Press, 1995), a study of phenomenological approaches to religion, and the editor of a volume of essays titled Ethical Perspectives on Environmental Issues in India (APH Publishing Corporation, 1999). For the past 30 years, he has been researching and publishing in the areas of comparative environmental philosophy and environmental movements in India. His research has been published in such journals as Zygon, International Philosophical Quarterly, and Worldviews. He has also contributed to the Encyclopedia of Religion, the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, and the Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy. He is interested in the relationship between the environmental values embedded in Indian religious traditions and environmental movements in India.

The Appiko Movement of Karnataka emerged in 1983 as a response to the degradation of the natural forests of the Western Ghats. Inspired by the non-violent ways of the Chipko Movement of the Western Himalaya, Appiko supported the forest biodiversity that sustained village economies. The concern for forest diversity led to projects that addressed the issue of the income of the forest dwellers. It also initiated legislation that limited environmental degradation in the Western Ghats and endorsed village sustainability. In his Fulbright-Nehru project, Dr. James is employing archival research, interviews, and visits to Appiko project sites to produce a monograph on the origin, development, and achievements of the movement.