Host City USA: New Delhi

Pamela Lothspeich

Dr. Pamela Lothspeich is associate professor of South Asian studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she has been teaching since 2008. She is a literary scholar and cultural historian whose work intersects with epic studies, performance studies, gender studies, and postcolonial studies. She has published extensively on modern iterations of Indian epics, particularly as they appear in Hindi literature, theatre, and film. Her previous research project was on the Radheshyam Ramayan and the theatre of Ramlila. Her books include Epic Nation: Reimagining the Mahabharata in the Age of Empire (OUP, 2009) and the co-edited volume, Mimetic Desires: Impersonation and Guising across South Asia (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022). She has also guest-edited the special issue, “The Field of Ramlila”, in the Asian Theatre Journal (Spring 2020).

Formerly, she taught at Michigan State University (2004–08) and Chicago University (2003– 04). She holds a PhD in South Asian studies and comparative literature from Columbia University (2003) and an MA in Asian languages and literature from the University of Washington (1996).

Dr. Lothspeich’s research project is on Raslila, an Indian performance genre spanning theatre, dance, music, and ritual, which enacts stories about the Hindu god Krishna and the goddess Radha. Many stories in the tradition emphasize Krishna’s youthful antics and loving interactions with his devotees. Raslila is related to other forms of devotional theatre, especially the Ramlila centered on the Hindu god Ram. This project aims to provide fresh insights into Raslila in all its material social, political, and aesthetic contexts, and also into its intertwined history with Ramlila.

Manish Chalana

Dr. Manish Chalana, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington, with adjunct appointments in Architecture and Landscape Architecture in the College of Built Environments. He is also an affiliate of the South Asia Center in the Jackson School of International Studies (JSIS). His work engages with urban planning through the lenses of historic preservation, international planning and development, and equity and social justice. He is also the director of the Graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation and co-directs the Center for Preservation and Adaptive Reuse (CPAR) which strives to connect the academia to the practice of historic preservation. Additionally, he is the membership chair of the National Council for Preservation Education (NCPE). Dr. Chalana’s scholarly contributions have been substantial, including two co-edited volumes. The first, titled Messy Urbanism: Understanding the “Other” Cities of Asia (with Jeffrey Hou, Hong Kong University Press, 2016), goes beyond the mainstream discourse in exploring the complexities of urbanism in Asian cities. The second volume, Heritage Conservation in Postcolonial India: Approaches and Challenges (with Ashima Krishna, Routledge, 2021), critically examines heritage conservation in the context of India’s postcolonial society. Additionally, he has published on topics of urban planning and historic preservation in a variety of academic journals, including the Journal of Architectural Education, the Journal of Heritage Stewardship, Planning Perspectives, Journal of Planning History, and Journal of the American Planning Association.

Dr. Chalana’s Fulbright-Nehru project is exploring the state of historic preservation, or “heritage conservation”, in India, focusing on its inclusivity and equity aspects. The project is primarily examining the representation of sites associated with underrepresented communities in the historical record and is assessing their management and interpretation on the ground. Additionally, the project is investigating the types of histories and memories that may have been lost for sites where physical evidence no longer exists. The study’s emphasis is on Dalits, non-elite Muslims, Sikhs, women, and non-binary groups.

Seton Uhlhorn

Seton Uhlhorn is a PhD candidate in South Asian studies at Harvard University. She received her BA with honors from the University of Texas at Austin, graduating from the rigorous Hindi-Urdu Flagship Program. Passionate about language studies, Seton works in Urdu, Hindi, and Persian. She has received numerous fellowships and grants to conduct advanced language training and archival research in India, including from the American Institute of Indian Studies and Boren Awards. Her doctoral research is on the work of the 18th-century poet and grammarian, Insha Allah Khan Insha. Currently, she serves as the teaching fellow for Hindi and Urdu and as the co-chair of the South Asian Studies Colloquium at Harvard University.

In her Fulbright-Nehru research project, Seton is studying the collected ghazals of Insha Allah Khan Insha. She is carrying out her research in Delhi, one of the historical capitals of Urdu literary culture, in affiliation with Jawaharlal Nehru University at the Centre of Indian Languages under the supervision of Professor Muhammad Asif Zahri, who specializes in pre-modern Indo-Muslim literary culture. In the modern view on Urdu literary tradition, the genre of ghazal is limited to a narrow set of themes, characters, and settings. While it is true that this set of themes forms the common generic ground across time, it fails to recognize the many attempts to expand the genre, particularly in the 18th century. Insha is perhaps the most deliberate about pushing the boundaries of the genre, garnering recognition in the early 19th century both inside and outside the royal courts. However, his contributions to Urdu literature have largely been overlooked in the last two centuries. Through her research on Insha ghazals, which employ the use of novel settings, characters, and colloquial language particular to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, she is exploring the ways in which his literary experimentations were informed by shifting political powers, an emerging middle class, and a budding cosmopolitan culture in North India.

Siya Sharma

Siya Sharma is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she studied anthropology and human biology and society. During her time at UCLA, Siya immersed herself in years-long research at the university’s medical and sociocultural anthropology departments. Under the guidance of Dr. Daniel Fessler and Dr. Abigail Bigham, she has cultivated a research niche focusing on the genome sequences present in Indian populations which contribute to metabolic disorder and lifestyle health problems. Most recently, Siya spearheaded a study of key metabolic processes and their relation to adverse health outcomes associated with the consumption of refined flour in North India. These experiences have allowed her to reconceptualize how genetics plays a key role in the dynamics between individuals and their respective health outcomes. These days, Siya is focused on Indian women’s health outcomes and is also assessing epigenetic influences using laboratory, medical survey, and participant interview methods.

As a teenager, Siya fundraised for and purchased thousands of sanitary hygiene products which she distributed in local soup kitchens, food pantries, and food drives. She has also volunteered as a medical caseworker at UCLA Health. In her spare time, Siya led her university’s poetry and spoken word program. She also served as a lead editor and creative director of UCLA’s FEM Magazine, a publication dedicated to writing about campus life through a feminist perspective.

The polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a metabolic and reproductive endocrine disorder with no known cure. Some of the highest rates of this disease are among Indian women. In India, Ayurvedic conceptualizations of the menstrual cycle regularity causes PCOS diagnosis to be perceived as an energy imbalance within the body. Siya’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is examining the ideas of health and balance for women diagnosed with PCOS and also their respective social, cultural, economic, and political conditions. While studying the social perceptions and current medical approaches to treating this disorder, Siya is proposing a two-part PCOS management model which incorporates both Ayurvedic concepts and biomedical practices.

Stuti Shah

Stuti Shah is a third-year doctoral candidate at Columbia Law School in New York. Her dissertation focuses on re-imagining crime and punishment in India through subaltern and feminist lenses. It engages in a critical rethinking of law and penal institutions that harm people and communities.

With a dual undergraduate degree in law and humanities from NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, Stuti spent three years at Trilegal, a leading law firm in India, focusing on data protection and intellectual property law. Her academic journey then took her to the U.S., where she earned her master’s in law from Columbia Law School. In the U.S., she has been a research fellow with the African American Policy Forum, Children of Incarcerated Caregivers, Reprieve, and the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School. She has also provided research assistance to Sanctuary for Families and Broadway Advocacy Coalition.

Stuti has written editorials and op-eds for reputable publications like The Hindu, The Indian Express, The Quint, The Wire, Deccan Herald, Firstpost, and Bar and Bench. Her article, “Beyond Caste Carcerality: Re-Imagining Justice in Sexual Violence Cases”, will soon be featured in the UCLA Law Review. Additionally, her piece, “Incarcerated Women and their Children in Indian Prisons”, appeared in the Economic & Political Weekly.

Stuti’s Fulbright-Nehru project is critically analyzing the experiences of incarcerated mothers – disproportionately belonging to the marginalized castes and classes – who are allowed to raise their children in Indian prisons till the children are six years old. This project is addressing the gap between existing law and scholarship on motherhood and state protection for children in prisons, and realities on ground. It is also engaging in a comparative study of Indian law and practical challenges with the U.S. model of motherhood in prisons where babies born to incarcerated women are promptly separated a year or so after their birth.

Sezin Sakmar

Sezin Sakmar recently graduated from the George Washington University with a major in anthropology and a minor in public health. During her undergraduate career, Sezin spent over 3,000 hours in various clinical settings ranging from working as an EMT and as an ED technician at a Level 1 trauma hospital to being a medical assistant at a pediatric clinic. Through these experiences, she fell in love with medicine but noticed the ways in which the American healthcare system was beset by serious infrastructural issues which led to health inequities in the case of minority communities. When studying in India through the School for International Training, Sezin conducted fieldwork with the Comprehensive Rural Health Project in rural Maharashtra, which helped her to realize her dream of becoming an OBGYN and providing empowerment-driven healthcare to communities around the world. During her final year of university, she also conducted independent research on racially concordant care among Washington, DC’s Black birthing population.

Sezin’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is bringing together the fields of public health and critical medical anthropology to make a positive impact on communities seeking family planning care. Through this research, Sezin is seeking to understand the particular ways in which healthcare providers are trained to deliver family planning services.

Ariana Pemberton

Ariana Pemberton is a PhD candidate in the History of Art department at the University of California (UC), Berkeley. Her dissertation is on ivory-carved objects from South Asia and on the Indian Ocean ivory trade, from the eighth to fifteenth centuries. Part of her research includes testing ivory objects using peptide mass fingerprinting analyses, which determine the provenance of the ivory to the species level. Ariana presented parts of her dissertation research at the Getty Graduate Symposium in January 2024 and at the University of Toronto in May 2024.

She also teaches an undergraduate course at UC Berkeley that focuses on art and material culture from the Indian Ocean World, ca. 700–1500 CE. Previously, she delivered lectures to upper-division undergraduates on “Bronze, Ivory, and Dragon’s Blood: Making the Middle Ages in the Indian Ocean World”. Ariana has also worked as a graduate student instructor in Asian Art at UC Berkeley.

In 2022, she completed her MA thesis on the Firuz Minar, a brick-and-basalt minaret built in Bengal during the 15th century, which today stands as the oldest extant monument in India patronized by an African ruler. Ariana presented this thesis at the Annual Conference on South Asia at the University of Madison, Wisconsin (October 2022), and at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference in Honolulu (March 2022). She completed her bachelor’s in art history from UC Berkeley in 2017. She has also conducted extensive fieldwork in India and has been a student of Hindi and Sanskrit.

Ivory was one of the most enigmatic materials in medieval South Asia: religious icons were carved out of ivory; rulers sat on ivory thrones; medical practitioners prescribed ivory for ailments; men and women lay on aphrodisiac ivory beds; and ivory chess pieces circulated across the Eurasian world. However, the centrality of this material transformed it into a global bio-commodity, setting into motion an ecological process that led to the endangerment of elephants. In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Ariana is writing a longue durée ecological art history of South Asian ivory.

Kaya Mallick

Kaya Mallick is an anthropologist of religion who studies the interrelation between yoga and gender. She holds an MA in South Asia studies from the University of Washington, where she was a two-time Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellow in Hindi/ Urdu. She is also a 200-hour Registered Yoga Teacher (200-RYT) and creator of The Woke Yogi, a yoga lifestyle blog. Kaya’s scholarship largely centers around female practitioners of the Hindu ascetic traditions of yoga and tantra, but she is also currently researching the role of yoga in hyper-masculine nationalist iconographies.

Kaya is a devout scholar, teacher, and practitioner of yoga who spends much of her free time on her mat. She has been teaching vinyasa and yin-style yoga for six years, and her classes seek to integrate the psychosomatic practice of modern postural yoga with the tradition’s rich philosophical lineage.

Before discovering yoga, Kaya was primarily a playwright whose plays were staged across the U.S. and India. While earning her BFA, she discovered an inherent theatricality in the Hindu mythological texts and thus she began weaving their tales into her own. The resulting research ultimately inspired her transition from dramaturgy to sociocultural anthropology. However, despite her disciplinary shift, Kaya continues to tell stories – on the stage and in the yoga studio.

With the Fulbright-Nehru research grant, Kaya is conducting an ethnography of Hindu women who lead ascetic lifestyles (sādhvīs/saṃnyāsasinīs/yoginīs). Through participant observations and interviews, she is studying how and why Hindu women practice asceticism in uniquely gendered ways and how their ascetic practices impact their lives both materially and metaphysically.

Mohnish Judge

Mohnish Judge is a Tibetan Indian American graduate of Oregon State University with a major in economics and minors in religious studies and linguistics. He is interested in the intersections of language, cultural identity, and political advocacy. As an undergraduate, he conducted research on Tibetan honorifics as part of his honors thesis, founded and led the Himalayan Student Association on his campus, and worked to provide low-income housing in his community.

For his Fulbright-Nehru project, Mohnish is investigating the mechanisms through which media functions, connects, and interacts with the Tibetan diaspora communities. Using a linguistic and communicative lens, he is examining the production and consumption of the media created by the Tibetan government-in-exile by conducting interviews and surveys, and through discursive and rhetorical analyses. The aim is to contribute to the current scholarship surrounding media, diaspora studies, imperialism, and cultural preservation.

Isabel Huesa

Isabel Huesa graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis with a BA in anthropology, global health, and the environment, and minors in biology and South Asian languages and cultures. She wrote her senior honors thesis on the history of fossil fuel divestment campaigns at higher education institutions. A proud alumna of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Isabel’s interests lie at the intersection of social justice, the environment, and health disparities. She dedicated her undergraduate career to understanding disease impact and harm reduction in marginalized communities; expanding student mental healthcare access; fighting for social justice; and examining Washington University’s role within the greater St. Louis. An advocate at heart, Isabel has mentored students as a mental health peer counselor, advised university leadership as the undergraduate representative to WashU’s Board of Trustees, and – in the wake of Missouri’s statewide abortion ban – led outreach efforts for Planned Parenthood. A critical language scholar, Isabel spent over six years learning Hindi. As a climate justice advocate, Isa participated in the United Nations’ 28th Conference of the Parties and also worked as a student consultant in the Interdisciplinary Environmental Law Clinic at WashU Law.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Isabel is in Delhi studying mental telehealth interventions in the HIV care continuum. She is evaluating and analyzing the efficacy of the existing 24/7 NACP (National AIDS Control Program) phone counseling service by examining the frequency of use by MSM (Men Who Have Sex with Men), the perceived effects of the phone counseling, and the patterns of HIV transmission and treatment in Delhi among MSM before and after such counseling.