Jawaharlal Nehru University Archives

Pirawat Punyagupta

Putt Punyagupta graduated from Yale University with a BA in history and South Asian studies. A two-time U.S. State Department critical language scholar, he is proficient in Chinese, Hindi, Lao, Persian, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Tamil, Thai, and Urdu, and is presently learning Bengali and Russian. He has worked for Yale’s Program in Iranian Studies as well as the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. He has also conducted research for the Stimson Center, a U.S. nonprofit that aims to enhance international peace and security through analysis and outreach. Besides, he has taken part in symposia at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies. Putt has also supported heritage conservation activities. Prior to Fulbright, he was an open-source analyst in Washington, D.C.

Putt’s Fulbright-Nehru project is studying the history of delimitation in India. It is investigating the process’ original design elements while examining the intentions of past delimitation commissions and their attempts to ensure neutrality. It is also studying the responses of political parties and rationales behind the federal- and state-level freezes that took place in 1971 and 2002. The project is primarily relying on archival materials housed in Delhi, but is also consulting collections in relevant regional centers such as Chennai and Mumbai. Overall, the project aims to shed light on the underlying architecture that sustains India’s vibrant democracy.

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.

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.

Supriya Pandit

Ms. Supriya Pandit is a recent graduate of Cornell University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Human Biology, Health and Society with minors in Global Health, Human Development, and Gerontology. As an undergraduate, she pursued a wide variety of interests, including human nutrition and reproduction, gender and sexuality, health policy, and ethics. She was also involved in research in molecular nutrition laboratory and pediatric medical practice. She has been a rock-climbing instructor and teaching assistant during her college career. Her work over three years as a resident advisor in an all-women’s dormitory, specializing in sexual violence prevention and response, as well as semester developing an intervention for women experiencing intimate partner violence during the pandemic have reinforced her commitment to gender equity. The culmination of her experiences, both academic and personal, has informed the questions she hopes to ask during her time in India. She hopes to continue her work as a physician and global health researcher. Upon the completion of her Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, she plans to pursue graduate study in both medicine and public health. Her interests include running, rock climbing, yoga, and Hindustani classical music.

COVID-19 has had a well-defined impact on sexual and reproductive health services in India, but little is known about the intentions and behavior that underlie the needs for those services. During her Fulbright-Nehru project, Ms. Pandit is designing a qualitative study about how the pandemic has affected people’s desire for parenthood in the short- and long-term. She plans to conduct semi-structured interviews and focus groups with people of reproductive age, mainly women. Through this project, she hopes to learn more about how this global catastrophe has influenced norms, expectations, and concerns about having children, and to inform India’s family planning landscape as a whole.

Calvin McCormack

Mr. Calvin McCormack is a musician, audio engineer, and computer programmer from Baltimore, MD. He completed his undergraduate degree in Jazz Studies from the University of Michigan, where he focused on the intersection of jazz improvisation and non-western musical idioms. During this time, he spent two months in Mysuru studying the Saraswathi Veena. He is also a recent graduate of Berklee College of Music, where he received his master’s degree in Music Production, Technology, and Innovation, with an emphasis on the use of bio-sensors and accessible interfaces in musical instrument design. As part of his thesis at Berklee, Mr. McCormack developed software that uses electroencephalogram (EEG) brainwave signals to control digital music generation and sound design. Since 2018, Mr. McCormack has been working with CED Society, a Dehradun-based non-profit dedicated to supporting women in the Himalayan border region. Together with CED Society, Mr. McCormack has helped launch the Sound of Soul Recording Studio and Music Institute, a nonprofit music education center and recording studio designed to empower disadvantaged and disabled women through music education, production skills, and creative expression. Mr. McCormack has also worked as an active musician, music instructor, author of music teaching materials, assistant at a digital fabrication lab, and spent two years as an assistant engineer at Radio Active Productions recording studio in Austin, TX.

Traditional musical instruments have been developed and refined over centuries, but digital instruments are a relatively new technology with great potential for innovation. Mr. McCormack’s Fulbright-Nehru project aims to design, develop, and test digital musical instruments that have been created specifically for people with disabilities in remote areas of northern India. The project is using bio-sensors, low-cost computers, and digital fabrication tools to create accessible musical instruments and is studying their efficacy in rural areas, resulting in an enhanced understanding of the design and production of affordable and accessible creative tools.

Devendra Sharma

Dr. Devendra Sharma, is a Professor of Communication and Performance at California State University-Fresno. He is also a seventh-generation performer of Swang, Nautanki, and Raaslila, the traditional musical theater genres of northern India. He has given more than 1000 performances worldwide and has acted in and directed many films and television programs. His ancestors made “Rahas” musical theatre popular at Awadh’s Nawab (King) Wajid Ali Shah’s court in the mid 1800s. Dr. Sharma’s artistic mission is to use the indigenous performing arts to bring critical attention to contemporary global issues.

In 2021, Dr. Sharma received the largest commission in the traditional arts ever in the US from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to create a contemporary Nautanki opera. In 2010, he was invited by the world-famous Théâtre du Soleil in Paris to train French actors in Nautanki. His directed musical, “Hanuman Ki Ramayan” was premiered at Prithvi Theater in Mumbai, completing its 100 shows in August 2018. Dr. Sharma introduced Swang-Nautanki to America and Europe, where he created a Nautanki troupe, and has directed many productions.

Dr. Sharma has written numerous book chapters and journal articles. His forthcoming book titled, Nautanki: The Musical Theatre of North India will be published by Bloomsbury Publishing, England in 2023. His latest article comparing Ramlila and Nautanki was published in Asian Theatre Journal in 2021. Dr. Sharma has been a Visiting Professor/ Artist in Residence at institutions across the world such as University of Oxford, Columbia University, University of California-Berkeley, Film and Television Institute of India, and Banaras Hindu University, among many others.

In 2007-08, Dr. Sharma was the Chief Creative Consultant to the United Nations Joint Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in India. In this capacity, he designed a folk media communication campaign to spread awareness on HIV/AIDS. From 1999-2004, he helped Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs to create a massive folk media campaign for women’s empowerment and health in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. As part of the campaign, Dr. Sharma trained more than 150 folk troupes to stage more than 10,000 folk performances. His artistic website is www.devnautanki.com.

Swang-Nautanki (north India’s traditional opera) is dying along with its “akhārās” (community-based competitive performance groups) due to the media invasion. The goal of Dr. Sharma’s Fulbright-Nehru project is to achieve the urgently-needed documentation of Swang-Nautanki akhārās, hand-written and published scripts, performances, and the aging master-performers. His research also aims to understand how Swang-Nautanki is functioning as a communication medium for Indian villagers in the 21st century. To understand this, Dr. Sharma intends to collaborate with the local community in Mathura and the areas nearby to encourage a local troupe to create a Swang-Nautanki performance piece on a contemporary issue of their choice.

Elizabeth Kadetsky

Ms. Elizabeth Kadetsky is a journalist, essayist, and fiction writer whose work often explores uses of memory and the filters of perception that can influence, distort and protect it. Her explorations into nostalgia have led her to an interest in the layered significances around the topics of antiquities and patrimony. Her most recent book, The Memory Eaters, released in March 2020 and winner of the Juniper Prize in Creative Nonfiction, was featured in The Boston Globe, LA Review of Books, and The Rumpus and was named a top pandemic read by Buzzfeed. Her essays and short stories have been chosen for a Pushcart Prize, Best New American Voices, and two Best American Short Stories notable citations, and they have appeared in The New York Times, Antioch Review, Gettysburg Review, the Nation, and elsewhere. Her other books include two works of fiction and the hybrid work of memoir and reportage First There Is a Mountain, published by Little, Brown in 2004 and re-released as an e-book by Dzanc Books in 2019. The latter came out of Ms. Kadetsky’s research as a student Fulbrighter to India during the first of her two previous Fulbright grants. She is an Associate Professor of Fiction and Nonfiction at Penn State University and a Nonfiction Editor at New England Review.

Ms. Kadetsky’s narrative nonfiction Fulbright-Nehru project follows the story of a set of Gupta era sapta matrika sculptures and their theft, export, and recognition as objects of exquisite beauty on the world stage. A work of general nonfiction, the research investigates what became of missing members of the set of sculptures, stolen from a temple in Rajasthan in 1956. A work of archival research, travel writing, history, reflection, investigative journalism, and creative nonfiction, Ms. Kadetsky’s project and its original research uses her lens as a mother and daughter to explore the layered significance of the sculptures’ journey(s) in the context of international calls for the restitution and repatriation of stolen artworks.

Boaz Atzili

Dr. Boaz Atzili is an Associate Professor at the School of International Service of American University in Washington DC. He holds a PhD in Political Science from MIT and a BA from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Before coming to AU Dr. Atzili held a post-doctoral fellowship in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard University. His research focuses on territorial conflicts and peace, the politics of borders and borderlands, the security aspects of state weakness, and deterrence and coercion. He published two books, Good Fences Bad Neighbors: Border Fixity and International Conflict (University of Chicago Press: 2012), and Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States that Host Nonstate Actors (Columbia University Press: 2018, with Wendy Perlman), as well as edited Territorial Designs and International Politics (Routledge: 2018, with Burak Kaderchan). His articles have been published, among other venues, in International Security, Security Studies, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, International Studies Review, and Territory, Politics, Governance.

Among other awards, Dr. Atzili’s work has gained the 2006 Edger E. Furniss Award for the best first book in international security from the Mershon Center for International Security, and the Kenneth N. Waltz Prize for the best 2006 dissertation in the area of security studies, from the American Political Science Association.

Dr. Atzili’s current project focuses on borderlands and buffer zones. He is interested in the way in which the interaction between center and periphery in borderlands affect interstate relations at the border, and the way international relations affect center-periphery relations within the borderlands. The project includes quantitative and qualitative components and an inter-regional comparison of South Asia and the Middle East.

India inherited from its British colonialists the notion that modern nation-state’s sovereignty stretches uniformly up to a country’s borders. But it also inherited a reality in which the presence of the state in its remote mountainous borderlands was very scarce. Dr. Atzili’s Fulbright-Nehru project seeks an investigation of center-periphery relations in the Indian borderlands with China and Nepal in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Ladakh. Through archival research and interviews, the research aims to advance our understanding of the role of center-periphery interaction in shaping perceptions, policies, and realities in the western Himalayas, at the edge of the Indian state.