Archives: Meet Our India Fulbrighters

Lakshyayog

Dr. Lakshyayog is a postdoctoral fellow at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), working on a British Academy-funded collaborative project between the University of Oxford and NLSIU. He obtained his undergraduate degree in geography from the University of Delhi in 2015, followed by a postgraduate degree in geography from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in 2017. He was awarded a PhD from JNU in May 2025. His doctoral research was funded by the Junior and Senior Research Fellowships from the University Grants Commission. Previously, he worked with development sector organizations such as the World Resources Institute India and ActionAid India.

Dr. Lakshyayog’s research interests lie at the intersections of sports and urban development in India, specifically examining the promotion of everyday physical activity and leisure in cities. With research articles and chapters published in reputed journals and edited volumes, he has presented his research work at several international conferences. In March 2025, he was selected as a Writing Urban India Fellow 3.0 of the Urban Studies Foundation, UK and NLSIU.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dr. Lakshyayog will explore the ways in which cities in India and the United States use sport to reshape urban space, mobilize real estate investment, and instrumentalize global visibility. Through a comparative study of Delhi and Ahmedabad in India and Atlanta and Los Angeles in the US, Dr. Lakshyayog aims to examine the emerging phenomenon of sports cities.

Kakoli Das

Dr. Kakoli Das is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Vidyasagar University. She is a multidisciplinary researcher, academician, and human resource professional. Dr. Das completed her MPhil in 2014 from the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata and was awarded PhD in development studies in 2023 from the same institution. In March 2026, she completed a professional course in public policy at the Centre for Policy Research and Governance, New Delhi.

Dr. Das was a Visiting Scientist at the Population Studies Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI Kolkata) and has also been associated with the World Health Organization. Her research interests lie primarily in demography and development studies, with a particular focus on fertility dynamics in developing countries, the behavioral economics of reproductive decision-making, and population policy. Her work has been published in reputable academic journals, featured in prominent media outlets, and presented at various academic platforms. She was awarded the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) Institutional Fellowship for her doctoral research and is also a recipient of the European Union’s MSCA Seal of Excellence (2025).

As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dr. Das is developing an innovative socio-cognitive framework to better understand the complex mechanisms of demographic transition in India and to identify key entry points for effective policy intervention. Through collaboration with US academics, her work aims to foster co-learning and contribute to the development of future-ready population strategies for India and beyond.

Hindol Chakraborty

Dr. Hindol Chakraborty is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Swami Vivekananda University, West Bengal. He earned his BA (Hons) in English from Narasinha Dutt College under University of Calcutta in 2010. He received a master’s degree in English literature from Aliah University, Kolkata in 2012. His PhD was awarded by Jharkhand Rai University, Ranchi in 2022.

Dr. Chakraborty’s primary research areas include the art and the sublime, memory studies, post-genocide literature and the Girardian theory of mimesis in Indian literature. He has published widely in various national and international journals and also contributed to several edited volumes published by renowned houses including Imprint, SLC India Publishers and Routledge. He is the translator of Rantidev Sengupta’s historical fiction Ishqnama. His research article on virtual reality literature and a co-edited volume on Eastern Himalayan literature will be published by Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge respectively.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Fellow at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University, Dr. Chakraborty is focusing on the transmission of the traumatic memory of the Armenian genocide across generations through the lens of postmemory, centering on the functionality of gendered postmemory among select Armenian-American and Armenian-Indian women writers. He aims to contribute to broader discussions on the representation of the American and Indian roles in nurturing the sentiment of the post-genocide Armenian diaspora. Dr. Chakraborty is also a President’s award winner for singing and composing ghazals and a harmonium exponent.

Haseena Naji

Dr. Haseena Naji is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Sciences and Languages at Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai. In October 2023, she was awarded a PhD from the Central University of Tamil Nadu, Thiruvarur, for her thesis applying Vladimir Propp’s morphological framework alongside Ochs and Capps’ five-dimensional model of narrative to Kurichyan folksongs, demonstrating that indigenous oral narratives require culturally responsive analytical frameworks beyond universalist Western structural models.

Dr. Naji’s research interests lie at the intersection of structuralist narratology, indigenous narratives, and comparative folklore. Her work is grounded in sustained ethnographic fieldwork with the Kurichya tribe of Wayanad, Kerala, collecting, translating and interpreting their corpus of folksongs alongside the community’s broader ritual practices.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Elon University, Dr. Naji is conducting a comparative study of ritual speech among the Kurichya and the Gullah/Geechee of the southeastern United States. Both communities face pressures of ecological and cultural marginalization, making the comparison both theoretically significant and ethically urgent. The project tests whether a structuralist-performative framework, recalibrated to honor cultural specificity, can reveal how two distinct indigenous traditions encode memory, identity, and resilience through oral performance.

Diptarup Ghosh Dastidar

Dr. Diptarup Ghosh Dastidar earned his BA (Hons) in 2014 from Serampore College, affiliated with University of Calcutta, and completed his MA in 2016 at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi. In December 2023, he was awarded a PhD from BHU. Dr. Ghosh Dastidar was a research intern at National Institute of Technology, Trichy in July 2019, where he worked on graphic medicine.

Dr. Ghosh Dastidar’s research interests lie primarily in comics studies, spatiality, visual cultures, graphic medicine, ludology, and Indology. He has published several research articles in SCOPUS-indexed international journals such as Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (JHU Press), and The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (Taylor & Francis). He has qualified for the CBSE-UGC NET examination, and was also awarded the Teach-for-BHU (TfB) Fellowship from August 2023 to July 2024. He worked as Assistant Professor at Amity University Chhattisgarh from 2020 to 2022.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dr. Ghosh Dastidar is focusing on the nature and history of the American graphic novel with respect to the growth and development of the Indian counterpart, with special emphasis on community interactions and exploration of the American “comics world” (Beaty 2012). He is exploring the network of comics scholarship and practice in the USA and bridging it with the Indian comics network, while deliberating on establishing authority on the idea of the graphic novel as a genre.

Balasubramanian Geetha

Dr. B. Geetha is an Assistant Professor at the Manipal Institute of Liberal Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Bengaluru. She holds a PhD in Film Studies from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Her research interests include film history, stardom, comedy studies, film aesthetics, and archival studies within South Asian visual cultures. She was the recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowship in Visual Arts at Michigan State University (2022–2023). She also received a travel grant from the UCLA Center for India and South Asia (2023) for her doctoral work on Tamil cinema.

Dr. Geetha’s academic publications have appeared in journals such as Celebrity Studies, South Asian Review, Senses of Cinema, Screen, and Journal of Cinema and Media Studies.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dr. Geetha’s work engages with the physical modality of slapstick to theorize the performative possibilities of the comic body in Tamil cinema. This research finds its methodological grounding by drawing on conceptual tools from the fields of film studies and performance studies to examine concerns around embodied caste labor through the gestural registers of the comedian. Overall, the research excavates the comedic strand of thought within the historiography of Indian cinema by studying the aesthetico-ethical stakes of laughter, pain, and film form.

Dr. Anand

Dr. Anand is an online urban and community forestry consultant at Fair Forests Consulting LLC, Michigan, USA specializing in urban forestry, ecosystem services, and climate resilience. He earned his MSc in natural resource management and PhD in environmental sciences from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi. His doctoral research focused on ecosystem services, carbon sequestration, and governance of urban green spaces.

Dr. Anand has worked with organizations including the USDA Forest Service and has extensive expertise in i-Tree Tools, GIS and urban ecological assessment. He has published in reputed national and international journals. He was honored with the 2025 i-Tree Innovation Award by the Urban and Community Forestry Society, USA.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dr. Anand is collaborating on international comparative research on urban greening and large-scale tree planting initiatives. His work focuses on plantable urban space, governance, community engagement, and landscape preferences in urban forestry. Dr. Anand is also contributing as co-editor to an academic volume on urban greening.

Anup Dandapat

Prof. Anup Dandapat is Professor of Electronics and Communication Engineering and Dean (Academic Affairs) at the National Institute of Technology, Meghalaya, an Institute of National Importance under the Ministry of Education, Government of India. He brings extensive experience to academic leadership, research, and institutional development within India’s public higher education system. As Dean (Academic Affairs), he has led collaborative academic reforms aligned with India’s National Education Policy 2020, including curriculum modernization, implementation of outcome-based education, strengthening doctoral research frameworks, and expanding interdisciplinary programs. He has also advanced digital academic governance and quality assurance processes to enhance transparency and global engagement. Prof. Dandapat’s academic contributions have been recognized through several distinctions, including the Best Researcher Award (2016), the Leader of the Year Award (2015) from NIT Meghalaya, and the Young Faculty Research Fellowship from the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Government of India.

Nazir Ahmad Ganai

Prof. Nazir Ahmad Ganai, Vice-Chancellor of Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir (SKUAST-K) is an academician who has transformed the university into an innovation-driven agricultural institution. Under his leadership, SKUAST-K has secured 109 patents and supported the incubation of 95 startups within a span of four years. He introduced a transformative development framework built on four key verticals. One of them is the SKUAST-K Agri-Education Model aligned with the National Education Policy. Another pillar is the SKUAST-K Research and Innovation Model, designed to support a knowledge-based and technology-driven agricultural economy. This model has earned Rank 1 in innovation, with 109 patents and 95 startups. Another vertical is the SKUAST-K extension and outreach model backed by ICT-driven technologies. The fourth is a social development model backed by a Rs 50-billion project, Holistic Agricultural Developmental Program, conceived and developed in-house. It is aimed at laying the foundation for a knowledge- and technology-driven bioeconomy in Jammu and Kashmir. Prof. Ganai is the recipient of many fellowships including Erasmus Mundus Fellowship of Netherlands, Durham International Fellowship for Research and Enterprise, SABRE Fellowship of Edinburgh Scotland, and Educational Leadership Fellowship of Israel.

Mohammed Haris Siddiqui

Prof. Mohammed Haris Siddiqui, Registrar, Integral University, a recipient of the Outstanding Professional Award (2025), and Academic Leadership Award (2024), has close to 20 years of experience in teaching, research and administration. An MTech gold medalist, he earned a PhD in Biotechnology from Integral University in collaboration with University of Lousiana USA and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, under the Young Scientist Fellowship Scheme of Uttar Pradesh Council of Science & Technology. He also serves as the Founder-Director of Integral Institute of Agricultural Science & Technology. Under his leadership the Institute was accredited by ICAR. In his role as Director of Directorate of Admissions and Academics, Prof. Siddiqui has been instrumental in increasing the admissions from within India and abroad in 14 faculties of study. He was Founder-Head of the Department of Bioengineering.