Meet Our India Fulbrighters Archive - Page 23 of 42

Payal Priya

Ms. Payal Priya is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for English Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has taught several courses in English language and literature at the undergraduate level and has been a language trainer for four years. She is pursuing her doctoral research, after completing her master’s in English literature from St. Xavier’s College, Ranchi, where she was part of an amateur theatre group. She has participated and won accolades in acting and public speaking and is trained in Kathak. Her doctoral research looks at the meaning of the sacral, particularly in Rāmlīlā, and the methods of creating the sacral in a performance. Her work also looks at the memory of the sacral and how it is transformed, transmuted, and transported in urban spaces and with the diaspora through semiotic translations. Her areas of interest are performance studies, memory studies, identity studies, Indian aesthetics, and philosophy.

Ms. Priya has presented her work at several national and international conferences and has published several academic papers. She writes short stories and poems, which have been published in reputable magazines and anthologies. She designed and conducted a workshop on creative writing for Umran, a Delhi based NGO.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Ms. Priya is teaching Hindi at the University of Notre Dame. Through this program, she wishes to share the culture of her country, experience another culture, and understand and explore the possibilities of building a more inclusive and accepting world.

Riddhi Pankhadiwala

Ms. Riddhi Pankhadiwala is working as an L-4 language interpreter and a Gujarati translator at Datamark Incorporated. She completed her master’s in English literature from Symbiosis International University, Pune in 2021. She also holds a master’s in Bharatnatyam and a bachelor’s in Indian classical music. In addition, she earned a diploma in gender and cultural studies from Savitribai Phule University, Pune. Throughout her academic journey, Ms. Pankhadiwala has dedicated herself to bringing Indian mythologies, performing arts, and aesthetics together on common ground for her doctoral research. She published a research paper on social voyeurism in Manjula Padmanabhan’s play Lights Out. Her research areas include Indian mythologies, Indian criticism, and performing aesthetics through literature.

Ms. Pankhadiwala works with Asian-Indians as a professional interpreter and translates across more than four languages. She has also been an active member of the English Language Teachers’ Association in Pune for a few years.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Ms. Pankhadiwala is teaching Hindi at Yale University. Having experienced a diversity of cultures around the world, she is working on finding a way to intermingle the cultures of the East and the West through performing arts and literature and to bring them to life on a stage. She aspires to utilize her Fulbright experiences to invent new teaching methods amidst the traditional approach of teaching in her own country, and to come up with more hands-on and practice-oriented pedagogies grounded in art and literature.

Krishna Kumar Pandey

Dr. Krishna Kumar Pandey is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the Central Institute of Hindi, Agra. Additionally, he holds the position of Regional Director at the Central Institute of Hindi’s regional center in Shillong, Meghalaya.

In 2020, Dr. Pandey completed his Ph.D. in linguistics at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. His doctoral research focused on the area of second language acquisition, orthography, spelling errors, and the culture of learning. He obtained his master’s in linguistics from the Department of Linguistics at Banaras Hindu University (BHU). In 2012, Dr. Pandey received the BHU prize for securing the first rank in his bachelor’s in linguistics at BHU. He has published research papers that explore topics such as the culture of learning, the role of English as a second language in India, and the nature and identity of the Devanagari script. Furthermore, he has written articles on language, culture, and identity, which have been published on reputed news platforms.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Dr. Pandey is teaching Hindi at the University of Michigan. In this role, he is contributing to the global prominence and growth of Indian languages, particularly Hindi. He intends to integrate the valuable teaching and learning experiences gained from this program into his pedagogical practices upon returning to India. In addition to providing an exceptional platform for teaching and learning, Dr. Pandey views the Fulbright FLTA program as a remarkable opportunity for fostering intercultural exchange.

Chandan Kumar

Dr. Chandan Kumar is Assistant Professor at the Department of English and Cultural Studies, Christ (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, Karnataka. At the department, he has designed and taught several linguistics courses and establishing the linguistics club ‘Taabiir’. Dr. Kumar completed his Ph.D. in linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 2020. His doctoral research delved into the morpho-syntactic and semantic aspects of the nominals in underrepresented languages of Bihar in India. Employing a typological approach, his study prioritized functionality while utilizing generative framework to elucidate structural phenomena across languages.

Dr. Kumar has presented and published articles in prestigious national and international conferences and journals. His research interests lie at the intersection of linguistic structure, society, and meta-structure. His recent publication examines the articulated NP/DP structure, specifically focusing on the challenges of definiteness and referentiality in the Magahi language. In 2020, he was awarded an honorarium of USD 1000 for a paper published by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul and World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., Singapore.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Dr. Kumar’s approach to teaching Hindi at the University of Illinois, Chicago revolves around fostering an intercultural learning experience. He strives to create a dynamic classroom environment that encourages students to explore and appreciate the diversity of languages and cultures, while also strengthening their linguistic skills. Dr. Kumar strives to promote multilingual competencies and an open exchange of ideas and practices amongst his students in an inclusive and dynamic classroom.

Fatima Ghazali

Ms. Fatima Ghazali completed her bachelor’s and master’s in English literature from Patna University, where she was awarded the Merit Certificate for being a rank-holder. After completing her master’s, she qualified the UGC National Eligibility Test in English, with a percentile score of 99.56. She has taught English as a second language, both at secondary school and undergraduate levels.

Ms. Ghazali enjoys writing. She wrote a research article titled “British Imperialism and the Woman: A Feminist Reading of the Native and the White Female”, which was published in Patna University Students’ Journal Iris. Her Letters to the Editor have been published in a leading national newspaper, The Indian Express. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. in English literature on the topic of the postcolonial Muslim woman and the relationship between their literary representations and colonial narratives.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Ms. Ghazali is teaching Hindi and Urdu at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She believes that learning new languages opens numerous avenues and makes one more informed as well as more empathetic. Therefore, she feels honored to act as the conduit between not just two different languages, but also two separate worlds. The U.S. is a melting pot of cultures from around the world and Ms. Ghazali hopes to learn and experience myriad new things during her time there as an FLTA.

Chandrika Das

Ms. Chandrika Das is a final year Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Translation Studies, the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. Her research has led her to explore epic narratives and folktales in the Rajasthan region. She is working on oral-visual cultures, which are now on the wane in a fast-changing digital world. She collects epic narrations and explores translational relations between the narratives’ visual and oral constituents.

Ms. Das is a recipient of the Junior Research Fellowship awarded by the University Grants Commission India. She has presented her work at various national and international conferences. She also served as Associate at the Nida School of Translation Studies, Italy and was selected for the SISU Translation Research Summer School, Shanghai, which was organized by the Baker Center for Translation and Intercultural Studies. She is a budding translator, who translates between Hindi and English. One of her translated short stories has been published by Sahitya Akademi in their journal Indian Literature.

As a Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant, Ms. Das is teaching Hindi at the University of Texas, Austin. Through her participation in the program, she is engaging with a diverse teacher-learner community. She hopes to return to India with upgraded pedagogical skills, which would aid her career as an academician in India.

Shivani Bhatt

Ms. Shivani Bhatt is Assistant Professor of Communication at the Department of Management, Institute of Information Technology & Management (IITM), IP University, New Delhi. At IITM, she is actively involved in conducting soft skills training, growth mapping, personality development sessions, and pre-placement training.

Currently pursuing her doctoral research at the English Department, School of Letters, Ambedkar University, Delhi, Ms. Bhatt recently completed her fieldwork in the Garhwal Himalayas region. Her research focuses on exploring the intricate connections between Garhwali women’s folk songs and their reflections of local environment. She has participated in several national and international conferences, including the American Folklore Society’s International Conference, 2019 held in Baltimore, as well as the Women in Asia Conference, 2021 organized by La Trobe University and the Asian Studies Associations, Australia.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Ms. Bhatt draws upon her enthusiasm for folkloristics and communications to teach Hindi at Boston University. Her aim is to maximize her Fulbright experience by fostering a multicultural perspective among her students and by facilitating the exchange of thought-provoking ideas within a global context.

Yatin Batra

Mr. Yatin Batra is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies, University of Delhi, Delhi. His doctoral research is interdisciplinary in nature and focuses on the identity aspects of the Siraiki (Bahawalpuri/Multani) and Sindhi communities through the written and oral narratives of Partition (1947) migrants and eyewitnesses. His fieldwork includes recording Siraiki folk traditions and the narratives of Siraiki partition survivors dispersed across India.

Mr. Batra graduated with an honors degree in English literature from Shyam Lal College, University of Delhi. He has a master’s (with a gold medal) and an M.Phil. in Comparative Indian Literature from the University of Delhi. His areas of interest include comparative literature, partition studies, gender studies, folklore, and culture studies. He has presented papers at numerous national and international seminars on diverse topics.

Mr. Batra is a recipient of the Tata Trust – Partition Archive Research Grant (2021) at the 1947 Partition Archive based in Berkeley, CA, where he is also a certified Citizen Historian. He received the Likho Citizen Journalism Fellowship (2020) from the Humsafar Trust (NGO for LGBTQ rights). He has worked with NGOs such as Katha and Kitaab Club to impart education to underprivileged students.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Mr. Batra aims at building cross-cultural connections between Indianness and Americanness through his creative strategies of teaching language. As a cultural ambassador, he is imbibing culture in a pluralistic way through the philosophy of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.

Anuja Sudheer

Ms. Anuja Sudheer works as a speech language pathologist and head of the early years program at the Centre for Autism and other Disabilities Rehabilitation Research and Education (CADRRE), Trivandrum, Kerala. CADRRE is a not-for-profit organization that runs a full-day intervention and education program in a school setting for children with autism aged two-18 years by an interdisciplinary team of speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, psychologists, and special educators. Ms. Sudheer holds a master’s degree in audiology and speech-language pathology from the National Institute of Speech and Hearing, University of Kerala, and has over 13 years of experience in supporting children with special needs.

Ms. Sudheer has obtained certifications in applied behavioral analysis therapy, picture exchange communication system, oral placement therapy, PROMPT therapy, Avaz (an AAC app), comprehensive literacy skills in individuals with complex communication needs from Jane Farrall Consulting, and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule. She conducts trainings of special educators through Continuing Rehabilitation Education programs by the Rehabilitation Council of India. She participates in outreach programs to raise awareness about autism among grassroots-level healthcare workers and parents in rural India. Additionally, she has given talks at numerous national and international conferences. Through the Fulbright DAI program, Ms. Sudheer hopes to receive training in strategies and methods for teaching young children with complex communication needs, particularly those with autism. She anticipates being able to put her training to use by directly supporting her students and colleagues at CADRRE and through outreach programs in rural India.

Madhura Rajvanshi

Ms. Madhura Rajvanshi has been teaching English to middle school children of Pragat Shikshan Sanstha’s Kamala Nimbkar Balbhavan, Phaltan for the past 15 years. It is a Marathi medium innovative school situated in a semi-urban region of western Maharashtra. She also works as the education coordinator of the school and her work involves administration, planning creative activities in school, and teacher mentoring. She has a master’s degree in elementary education from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Ms. Rajvanshi uses art, storytelling, and music to make English learning interesting and relevant for her students. She has made a substantial contribution to children’s creative and independent English writing through the production of storybooks. She has delivered talks and written several articles on the same.

Through the Fulbright DAI program, Ms. Rajvanshi hopes to understand how English teaching is approached and learning spaces are organized in American schools. She aims to explore the constructive attitudes towards language teaching in the U.S. and see how they can be adapted to Indian context.

Ms. Rajvanshi will use her Fulbright experience and learning to create a structured program for teachers in her community for teaching English to non-native speakers. After her return to India, she will share it with the teachers through workshops and training programs.