Thiruvananthapuram Archives

Sarah Jacob

Sarah Jacob is a public policy researcher whose work has involved labor, migration, gendered violence, and public economics. She recently graduated from Georgia State University with a master’s in public policy. While attending graduate school, she served as a graduate research assistant and learned hard and soft skills pertaining to community needs assessments and qualitative and quantitative program evaluation. She earned her undergraduate degree from Brandeis University, where she studied economics, with minors in philosophy and legal studies. Her academic background has shaped her commitment to equity-driven research and marginalized communities.

Professionally, Sarah has worked across multiple U.S. states as a community organizer, labor advocate, and social service provider. She worked for the Georgia House minority leader as a policy assistant in 2026, flagging harmful legislation and conducting public policy research to guide legislative decision-making. In Chicago during 2022–2024, she built and led a home energy campaign in Rogers Park, during which she developed relationships with diverse communities through street-level engagement and also provided domestic violence prevention training to Asian communities.

Beyond her academic and professional pursuits, Sarah is an avid reader, a lover of history, and an active participant in community organizing. Her lived experiences across many U.S. cities, combined with her deep personal ties to India, shape her interest in fostering cross-cultural dialogue, public scholarship, and long-term engagement with global labor issues.

For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Sarah is studying labor welfare in the gig economy of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, where she is examining how India’s shift toward market-driven growth has reshaped work structures. Through an affiliation with the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), she is conducting semi-structured interviews with platform workers, managers, and stakeholders, supported by a Malayalam-speaking research assistant. Her research is integrating qualitative fieldwork with existing CDS data to analyze issues such as worker security, dignity, and “decent work” conditions. The project aims to contribute to global labor policy conversations and strengthen academic exchanges between the U.S. and India.

Ritikraj Arya

Ritikraj Arya is a 2023 graduate of Brown University, where he majored in biology. During his time at Brown, he was an avid volunteer with Camp Kesem, a nonprofit organization that provides free summer camps for children whose parents have been diagnosed with cancer. Through this work, he helped create a supportive environment for children navigating some of life’s most difficult circumstances.

Ritikraj’s passion for working with and supporting children shaped his postgraduate work as a researcher in pediatric end-of-life care at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). At UAB, he contributed to projects funded by organizations such as the Children’s Oncology Group, the National Institutes of Health, and the American Cancer Society. His work spanned a wide range of pediatric end-of-life care initiatives, including studies evaluating novel quality measures for pediatric end-of-life care and qualitative research involving bereaved parent interviews. His experiences conducting qualitative research in end-of-life care helped shape the direction of his Fulbright project studying pediatric palliative care in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

Outside of his academic and professional work, Ritikraj enjoys cooking, reading, and spending time with his family.

Though home to only 3 percent of India’s population, the state of Kerala delivers nearly 90 percent of the nation’s palliative services by supplementing care with the efforts of local volunteers – an approach known as the “Kerala Model” of palliative care. Partnering with Loyola College of Social Sciences and Pallium India, Ritikraj’s Fulbright-Nehru project is conducting an ethnographic study examining how this model mobilizes community volunteers to provide high-quality pediatric palliative care. Through participant observation and in-depth interviews with volunteers, parents, and others, the project aims to generate insights that can inform global efforts to expand volunteer integration in pediatric palliative care amid critical physician shortages.

Elizabeth Simon

Dr. Elizabeth Simon RN, PhD, ANP-BC, has over 25 years of academic nursing experience and over 30 years of clinical experience. She had served in the capacity of Staff Nurse, Staff Development Instructor, Program Coordinator, Director, and Dean. She was also appointed as a Critical Care Nursing Consultant for the Corporate Nursing Services of the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation (NYCHHC). Dr. Simon is also a board-certified Adult Health Nurse Practitioner. She has authored and reviewed books on Critical Care Nursing, book chapters on transcultural issues, edited a book on non-communicable diseases, published many articles in peer reviewed journals and periodicals in the US and India. She has presented at various national and international forums. Dr. Simon was a Fulbright-Nehru Academic Excellence Scholar during 2015-16 academic years. Her academic degrees include BSc (N) from College of Nursing, Christian Medical College, Ludhiana, Punjab University; MS in Critical care nursing from the School of Nursing, Columbia University; EdM. in Nursing Education from Teachers College; MS in Adult Health Nurse Practitioner from Hunter College, and PhD in higher education from Walden University. She was an LANP fellow of American Association of Colleges of Nursing.

The proposed Fulbright-Nehru project intends to implement three specialized nursing programs. A US model of specialized education for graduate nurses as Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) to provide care to the rape trauma victims. A second area of special training in Critical care transport nursing to solve the lack of a systematic prehospital care. Men in Nursing will be utilized to fulfill this advance role. A third curriculum introduced will be Home Hospice and Palliative Care Nursing. The Indian Nursing Council (INC) will oversee and guide implementation of these proposed programs.