University of Lucknow Archives

Anjana Mishra

Prof. Anjana Mishra is assistant teaching professor in the Department of Politics & International Relations, School of International and Public Affairs, Florida International University (FIU), Miami. She joined FIU as an adjunct professor in 1998. Prior to that, she taught at the University of Lucknow and NSN Degree College, Lucknow, India. At FIU, she teaches courses on South Asia, development studies, and global issues. Dr. Mishra’s research interests include issues related to the Asian Indian diaspora, gender, development, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. She is currently editing a book, Politics and Culture in the Developing World. Dr. Mishra is active in the South Florida community and is a member of the Miami Dade County Asian Advisory Board; she is also the secretary, executive board member, and founding member of the Miami Association of Indian Americans for Culture and Arts.

Prof. Mishra’s interdisciplinary project for the Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Award involves a survey exploring the impact of globalization and COVID-19 on the empowerment of chikan artisans – Urdu-speaking, Muslim women – living in the city of Lucknow. Using quantitative and qualitative research methods, this study is assessing the improvement, decline, or status quo in the empowerment of these women in the face of threat from machine-made Chinese chikan fabric and the more recent challenge presented by the loss of wages and health issues arising from the pandemic-related lockdown.

Medha Asthana

Medha Asthana (they/them/theirs) is currently pursuing a PhD in anthropology at Brandeis University where they study kinship and domestic spaces, intergenerational care, queerness, and gender in North India. Medha is an educator committed to inclusive higher education pedagogy and was recently chosen as a fellow with the MLA Institutes for Reading and Writing Pedagogy at Access-Oriented Institutions. Beyond their academic research, Medha is committed to publicly engaged work with grass-roots community organizations. They also hold a BA (honors, cum laude) in anthropology and a BA in business administration from the University of California, Irvine.

Medha’s Fulbright-Nehru project is studying the role of the family and the domestic space as constitutive of queer identity and belonging, especially for queer individuals socialized as daughters. They are examining daily relations between queer daughters (which includes cisgender women, non-binary people, and transgender men) and their mothers and other female kin in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh; this involves topics of gendered expectations, narratives of care, and negotiations of power.

Asif Majid

Dr. Asif Majid is a theatre researcher, educator, maker, and consultant who scripts, stages, and traces local and global nodes of history, power, performance, race, and (de)coloniality, particularly by attending to the intersection of Islam and performance; devising community-based participatory theatre; and making improvisational music. Currently, he is assistant professor of theatre and human rights at the University of Connecticut where he is also affiliate faculty in anthropology; Asian and Asian American studies; interdisciplinary indigeneity, race, ethnicity, and politics; and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. He received his PhD in anthropology, media, and performance from The University of Manchester and his work has been funded by organizations like the Fulbright Commission, the Wallace Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Dr. Majid has served as an Arts Research with Communities of Color Fellow, Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow, and Lab Fellow. He has also published in numerous journals like The Drama Review, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, and Contemporary Theatre Review. His performance credits include association with The Kennedy Center and the Royal Exchange Theatre. His book, Making Muslimness: Race, Religion, and Performance in Contemporary Manchester, is forthcoming with Routledge in 2025. He can be found online at www.asifmajid.com.

Muharram commemorations of the death of Hussein ibn Ali – Shi’a Muslims’ third imam and Prophet Muhammad’s grandson – in Lucknow and Hyderabad represent India’s largest iterations of the world’s biggest, transnational, annual, public mourning ritual. In his Fulbright-Nehru project, Dr. Majid is conducting a performance-based study of Muharram processions and poetry via participant observations, interviews, and autoethnography to examine how these practices make, unmake, and remake Indian transreligious harmony. This research will result in scholarly/public essays and a book project involving: Shi’a, Sufi, and Hindu studies and performance studies; Muharram studies in the under-researched Indian context; and transnational comparisons of Muharram within Indian disaporas.