Host City USA: New Delhi

Sienna Fisher

Sienna Fisher graduated from Trinity University with a degree in international studies, concentrating in global health, and with a minor in women and gender studies. Throughout her undergraduate career, she engaged with interdisciplinary coursework which deepened her interest in the sociocultural determinants of health and healthcare accessibility. This academic foundation enabled her to pursue research across a range of topics, including narrative medicine, digital health communications, and women’s health.

Sienna first came to India in the fall of 2023 with the School for International Training to study public health, gender, and sexuality. During her semester abroad, she completed an internship with Aarohi, a nongovernmental organization in rural Uttarakhand. She collaborated with Aarohi’s Medical Mobile Unit and home health team during health camps and visits, and also conducted independent research on the evolution of women’s health in the Kumaon region of the Himalaya.

Since graduation, Sienna has worked as a medical assistant in interventional pain management and dermatology clinics. She hopes to integrate her passion for medicine, gender studies, and the humanities to improve healthcare accessibility and address health disparities within her community and beyond.

Sienna’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is focusing on the health experiences and perceptions of women aged 40 and above within marginalized communities in the rural regions of India. The study is exploring their overall health and health-seeking behaviors, with a focus on menopause, as well as reproductive and sexual health. She is also investigating the role of traditional health practices in addressing health needs when formal treatment is unavailable or inaccessible.

Riaan Dhankhar

Riaan Dhankhar studies international relations, focusing on South Asia and European affairs. He graduated with a BA in international relations from Pomona College in 2025. As an undergraduate, he interned at the Wilson Center, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Congress. During his time at the State Department, Riaan served as a liaison officer at the 75th Anniversary NATO Summit which helped him develop a keen interest in studying how states, especially in the Indo-Pacific, can develop closer ties through strategic security-driven multilateral cooperation.

He was born in Mumbai and grew up in New Jersey.

Riaan’s Fulbright-Nehru project, “India’s Centrality to a Resurgent QUAD”, is investigating Indo-U.S. military engagement within the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) forum. Conducted in affiliation with Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, his research is analyzing historical dynamics, contemporary policies, and future strategic scenarios shaping QUAD relations.

Miriam Anderson

Miriam Anderson is a multimedia artist and graduate of The University of Alabama, where she majored in creative media with a minor in The Blount Scholars Program. Her work bridges the worlds of Bharatanatyam dance and film, reflecting her commitment to both performance and storytelling across disciplines.

After training for five years under Sheila Rubin at Natyananda Dance Company in Birmingham, Alabama, Miriam made her Bharatanatyam arangetram (debut) in June 2024. She has performed in diverse settings, including opening for spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar at the BJCC and participating in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s cultural program. She has also represented Natyananda at the Freeform program with The Dance Foundation. Miriam completed the Warrier Foundation Residency from Coimbatore, India, where she immersed herself in the practice and philosophy of Bharatanatyam. In the spring of 2024, she served as lighting designer and stage manager for the U.S. tour of the renowned Bharatanatyam artist Rama Vaidyanathan, where she was part of productions such as New Dimensions and Ratna Garbha.

Miriam’s interdisciplinary practice allows her to merge cultural research, choreographic exploration, and visual media. Whether behind the camera or on stage, she is drawn to projects that invite reflection, preserve tradition, and build new paths for creative engagement. Her work exemplifies a commitment to honoring classical forms while reimagining how they can speak to contemporary audiences.

For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Miriam is studying Bharatanatyam in Delhi. Her project is exploring the expressive and technical depth of Bharatanatyam, with a focus on breath, alignment, and the creation of original choreography. Drawing from her training and experiences as a non-Indian dancer, she is also involved in producing a series of video essays documenting her artistic process and transformation. These essays attempt to offer a behind-the-scenes look at artistic development, cultural immersion, and the disciplined practice of Bharatanatyam as a living, evolving art form rooted in tradition and personal devotion.

John C. Lore III

Professor John Lore is the director of Trial Advocacy at Rutgers Law School. He trains law students and attorneys throughout the U.S. and internationally. He has also trained judges, lawyers, social service agency workers, law enforcement personnel, and students in countries such as Kenya, India, Ireland, Nigeria, Tanzania, Japan, Singapore, and China. In May 2019, Professor Lore was a visiting faculty at Jilin University in Changchun, China. He also provides training to advocacy instructors and consults with law schools, universities, and government agencies, to create effective teaching programs.

Professor Lore is the co-author (with Steven Lubet) of Modern Trial Advocacy: Analysis and Practice(published by NITA and Wolters Kluwer), which is one of the leading trial advocacy books used by lawyers and students throughout the world; it is taught in over 90 U.S. law schools and has also been translated or adapted for use in Japan, Canada, Israel, Taiwan, China, and Chile.

In 2011, Professor Lore established and now directs the Center for Public Interest Training at Law School which provides free training for public interest lawyers. His commitment to teaching has been recognized by Rutgers where he has received a major teaching award each year since 2012.

Before pursuing a teaching career, Professor Lore was an assistant public defender at the Defender Association of Philadelphia and at the Cook County Public Defender’s Office in Chicago. Over the course of his career, he has litigated hundreds of trials and motions before a wide variety of courts and administrative agencies.

Professor Lore serves on several committees and boards, including the New Jersey Supreme Court Civil Practice Committee. Apart from trial advocacy, he is an expert on children’s rights and juvenile law. He has been a frequent contributor to various U.S. media outlets.

Yoshiko Okuyama

Dr. Yoshiko Okuyama is a full professor of Japanese studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. Her areas of expertise include Japanese mythology, disability studies, second language acquisition, and technology-enhanced pedagogy. She is currently developing a new course on Japanese comics translation that incorporates AI literacy.

Dr. Okuyama is the author of Tōjisha Manga: Japan’s Graphic Memoirs of Brain and Mental Health (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Reframing Disability in Manga (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2020), and Japanese Mythology in Film: A Semiotic Approach to Reading Japanese Film and Anime (Lexington Books, 2015).

She has received numerous grants, fellowships, and awards, including the Association for Asian Studies’ long-term research grant and a Japan Foundation research fellowship. She currently serves as a visiting scholar at Cornell University’s East Asian Studies Program and as an affiliated researcher at the Institute of Ars Vivendi, Ritsumeikan University.

Beyond academic publishing, Dr. Okuyama regularly delivers guest lectures at universities and also serves as a cultural consultant for media outlets such as the National Public Radio, National Geographic, and CNN.

Originally from Tokyo, she now resides in Hawaii. In addition to English and Japanese, she can communicate in American Sign Language. A midlife convert to long-distance running, she has completed numerous races, including full and half marathons. When not chasing publication deadlines or marathon finish lines, she enjoys experimenting with vegetarian recipes which are (mostly) well received by her husband and son.

Dr. Okuyama’s Fulbright-Nehru project involves teaching a course on Japanese mythology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, focusing on film analysis and exploring possible intersections of Japanese mythology with Indian traditions. Using semiotics as a framework, she is helping students explore how myths shape cultural narratives in both Japan and India. The project aims to deepen cross-cultural understanding and enrich the academic discourse on comparative mythology. The results of the research will be disseminated through lectures, conferences, and publications in order to foster future collaborations between Dr. Okuyama’s home and host institutions, thereby advancing the global study of mythology.

Smita Guha

Dr. Smita Guha is a tenured and full professor at St. John’s University, NY, in the School of Education. She is also the chairperson of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
She received her PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her research involves preparing teachers in the areas of math and science education, and in child development.

Dr. Guha has written three books: Today’s Youth, Tomorrow’s Leaders; Healthy Children; and Teacher as Researcher. Her fourth book, Critical Literacy for Socio-emotional Learning is in the print stage. She has also written several book chapters. Forty-one of her articles have been published in scholarly journals, and she has presented at more than 60 international, national, state and regional conferences.

Dr. Guha is also the founder of an after-school program that demonstrates the collaboration of family, school, and community. She has received several grants and has worked with underprivileged mothers and children living in homeless shelters in the U.S. and India. She is also the recipient of honors such as the Talent Award from New York State Assembly, the New York City Corps Artist Award, and the Outstanding Citizen award from the Council of the City of New York. Further, twice she has received the merit award and the faculty recognition award from St. John’s University.

A vocalist of Indian music, Dr. Guha is the founder and president of the nonprofit organization, Anandasangit.

Culture can impact how children build values, belief systems, thinking, and understanding of themselves as individuals and as members of society. The unique cultural influences that children respond to from birth include customs and beliefs around food and artistic expression. While a healthy diet is associated with overall development and improved cognitive function, so also is early exposure to music which ignites all areas of a child’s faculty. Both help the body and the mind to work together. The purpose of Dr. Guha’s Fulbright-Nehru study is to focus on child development across cultural contexts regarding food and music in India.

Abhishek Bhati

Dr. Abhishek Bhati is an associate professor of political science and director of the Asian Studies Program at Bowling Green State University, Ohio. He holds a PhD in public administration from the University of Nebraska, Omaha, and an MA from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. His research focuses on nonprofit and civil society organizations. Specifically, Dr. Bhati examines how nonprofit and civil society organizations mobilize resources to advance their mission and support public good. He was awarded the Wilson C. “Bill” Fundraising Research Award in 2021 and was a social impact strategy doctoral fellow at the School of Social Policy & Practice, University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Bhati’s work has appeared in top nonprofit and public administration journals such as Public Administration Review and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. In 2022, his work received the best paper award from Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations. Beyond his academic responsibilities, he serves on the Planning Commission of the city of Bowling Green.

Dr. Bhati’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is focusing on understanding how nonprofit and civil society organizations (CSOs) are using generative AI tools to advance their mission; it is also studying the potential pitfalls or challenges to the use of this emerging technology. The study is using a mixed-method research design by conducting an online survey and interviews with CSOs and other stakeholders in India. This research aims to benefit CSOs and policymakers by helping them understand the impact of “disruptive technologies” on the global civil society sector.

Sonia Taneja

Dr. Sonia Taneja is a general pediatrician at Boston Medical Center and a clinical instructor at Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. She was most recently a chief resident at the Boston Combined Residency Program in Boston Medical Center and Boston Children’s Hospital, where she was engaged in curricular development for both domestic and global health equity education.

She holds a BA in psychology from Yale University and an MS in public health from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is a former Parker Huang Research Fellow in India, where she conducted a mixed-methods study identifying the risk factors for mood disorders among caste-based sex workers in New Delhi and brothel-based sex workers in Kolkata and Patna. She obtained her MD from the Yale School of Medicine where she worked with the Elevate Policy Lab and the MOMS Partnership to replicate a community-based participatory research intervention for co-located social and mental health services for low-income parents.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, she is continuing her work with adolescents and families in partnership with the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh to develop a community-based participatory intervention mechanism to optimize medication-assisted therapy for opioid use disorder among adolescents in India. The goal of this research is to develop PYAR, or Parents as Youth Allies in Recovery, a family-centered behavioral intervention program designed to equip caregivers with skills to support medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) and HIV prevention among young people who inject drugs (YPWID). Dr. Taneja is utilizing community-based participatory research methods to interview youth who are under-engaged or have recently ceased MOUD and their caregivers to elicit the following: knowledge and attitudes about MOUD and HIV prevention services; challenges faced by YPWID and caregivers in recovery; and the intervention components that youth and caregivers identify as most effective and acceptable.

Rebecca Waxman

Ms. Rebecca Waxman is a PhD candidate at UCLA in the Department of History, specializing in South Asia and with a concentration in gender studies. Her work aims to study occurrences of sexual and gender-based violence that marked turning-point moments in colonial and postcolonial Indian social, political, and feminist histories. Ms. Waxman received her BA in history with a certificate in South Asian Studies from Wesleyan University in 2016, where she wrote her honors thesis historicizing the Delhi Gang Rape of 2012. Her work has been published in Women’s History Review and A Cultural Encyclopedia of Lost Cities and Civilizations (forthcoming).

Ms. Waxman’s dissertation project historicizes the relationship between the interpersonal, violent act of rape and the broader Indian society and politics, exploring how colonial categories and dynamics shaped understandings and legislation of female sexuality and of sexualized violence in British and independent India. It also studies the continuities and discontinuities between colonial and postcolonial India regarding rape. Ms. Waxman’s research endeavors to illuminate key nodes in the complex heterogeneous history of sexual violence in modern South Asia in order to recuperate the subjecthood of Indian women who enter the archive in moments of violation; it also aims to question the dominant knowledge structures informing the subjugation of women.

Taryn Williams

Ms. Taryn Williams is currently a head teacher and secondary generalist with the Lake and Peninsula School District in remote Alaska. She is a former Fulbright Fellow to Germany and a Kathryn Davis Fellow for Peace at Middlebury College. This past summer, she was a WWI Fellow through the National Endowment for the Humanities at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. Ms. Williams also serves as her district’s student government advisor and as treasurer of her local National Education Association.

Ms. Williams got her BS in urban studies (with a focus on urban education) from the University of Pennsylvania in 2014 and her MSEd in elementary education from the same university in 2015; she also earned a certification in K-12 TESOL. Additionally, she completed a certificate through the Strategic Leadership in Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania in 2021.

Her goal for her Fulbright DAST in India is to share and compare knowledge about the best practices in curriculum and assessment design, and learn about Indian culture. She is also teaching people about the unique and beautiful location she calls home: the Alaskan bush.