Host Institution India: University of Massachusetts

Shanthie Mariet D Souza

Dr. Shanthie Mariet D’Souza is Founder & President of Mantraya, an independent research forum. She is also a visiting faculty at the Naval War College, Goa; a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, Washington D.C.; a Research Fellow at WeltTrends-Institut für internationale Politik, Potsdam; an International Advisor at the Nordic Counter Terrorism Network, Helsinki; and an Adviser for Independent Conflict Research and Analysis, London. In a career spanning over two decades, she has conducted extensive field research in India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Africa, and Australia.

Dr. D’Souza, with a Ph.D. in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, is an established inter-disciplinary researcher on conflict resolution, foreign policy, decision making, and human security. She has been widely published in national and international journals, newspapers, policy forums, and edited books, receiving attention from academic and practitioners, informing public debate and discourse.

She has been awarded various fellowships and been associated with a number of thinktanks, universities in India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Singapore, Australia, Germany, Canada, and the U.S. Most recently, Dr. D’Souza has been a Founding Professor at the Kautilya School of Public Policy,Hyderabad. She has been a recipient of the Fulbright Junior Research Fellowship (2005-06) and the President’s Award for Excellence in Research (2009) from the Manohar Parrikar-Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

As the Fulbright-Nehru Visiting Chair in Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, she will be teaching and conducting research on Global Climate Change and Geopolitics of Energy and prospects for cooperation between India and U.S. in addressing issues of climate change, mitigation, and crisis management.

Avijit Maity

Mr. Avijit Maity is a Ph.D. scholar at the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Indore. His current area of research focuses on physical insight into novel lipid corona formation and its impact on protein corona formation. His research on the underlying mechanism of lipid corona formation on amino acid functionalized gold nanoparticles has been published in several peer-reviewed international journals. He also won the best oral presentation award in the CHEM-In-house Symposium held at IIT Indore, India.

Mr. Maity earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal and his master’s degree in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology Indore . He was a recipient of the merit cum means scholarship from the Government of West Bengal and IIT Indore during his bachelor’s and master’s degree respectively. In his leisure time, he enjoys spending time with his friends and loves to arrange cultural programs.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Mr. Maity is exploring the impact of lipid corona composition on nanoparticle uptake by the cell. The aim of his project is to investigate the extent of the cellular uptake quantitatively when different surface charged lipid and hard-soft lipid corona is present around the nanoparticles. As the research on the lipid corona field is emerging day by day, his advanced research in this topic will provide a new outlook to Nanoscience community.

Purendra Prasad

Dr. Purendra Prasad is a professor of sociology at the University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Telangana. He has previously held positions at the Centre for Social Studies (CSS), Surat, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. Dr. Prasad was a British Council grantee for medical anthropology research at Brunel University, West London, UK (1999-2000), and he also collaborated with the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), California Recovery and Reconnaissance team on the Bhuj Gujarat Earthquake in 2005. His research interests encompass critical agrarian studies, environmental studies, the political economy of health and development, and urban studies. His recent work investigates wealth accumulation and business elites in India as part of a broader research project on wealth inequalities in South Africa, Brazil, and India. Dr. Prasad has co-edited the book Equity and Access: Health Care Studies in India (Oxford University Press, 2018), and serves on the editorial advisory committee of the Sociological Bulletin. Additionally, he contributes to the academic and ethical advisory boards of various universities and institutions in India.

As Fulbright-Nehru Visiting Chair at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, Dr. Prasad is teaching and conducting research on how the intersection of caste/race, gender, and growing economic disparities shaped wealthy elites in India and the U.S.

Shankar Gugoloth

Shankar Gugoloth is a Ph.D. candidate and teaching assistant at the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. He completed his master’s in political science from the University of Hyderabad, Telangana, and his bachelor’s in technology in production engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli, Tamilnadu. Shankar’s research interests include youth studies, education, youth aspirations, and politics. His work also elucidates the concept of “becoming” and the aspirations of marginalised youth through the idea of SWAEROS. In the past, Shankar held a senior tech associate position at the Bank of America, Hyderabad, for three years. His passion for social science led him to move from engineering to social science. He has written blogposts on various websites and presented his works at several national and international conferences.

Shankar’s doctoral thesis explores the question of the construction and cultivation of various identities within the single social category SWAEROS/ “The Society” students. He looks at aspiration formations among Dalit and tribal college-going youth (boys and girls) in Telangana, particularly among students enrolled in the Telangana Social Welfare Educational Institute Society (TSWREIS) schools in southern India. His doctoral work is ethnographic and uses visual ethnography to understand youth aspirations. TSWREIS is a state government-funded group of residential educational institutions for Dalit and tribal students in the state of Telangana.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, Shankar is engaging with some of the alumni of TSWREIS, to gain valuable insights into the experiences of marginalized students from the “Society” schools studying or working in the U.S. This will help him to explore the role of TSWREIS in shaping aspirations of marginalized communities, and collaboratively write and interpret an ethnographic account of youth aspirations and state engagement with the marginalized community.