Sarthak Arora

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowships
Project Title:	N.A.
Field of Study:	Environmental Science/ Studies
Home Institution:	Ramjas College, Delhi University, New Delhi, Delhi
Host Institution:	Northeastern University, Boston, MA
Grant Start Month:	August 2026
Duration of Grant:	Two years

Brief Bio:

Mr. Sarthak Arora is a researcher based in Delhi, working at the intersection of environment and machine learning. His research looks at river remediation, wildfire risk-prediction, biodiversity monitoring, and remote sensing. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Statistics from Ramjas College, Delhi University, and a PG Diploma in Machine Learning from Plaksha University.

Having worked with corporations such as Nearbuy, Paytm, Disney+ Hotstar, and Indifi as a Data Analyst/Scientist in the past, Sarthak pivoted to academia to pursue interdisciplinary research with universities and non-profits. As a part of Collaborative Earth’s Ganges Lab, led by Dr. Anthony Acciavatti, he has been engaged in developing a comprehensive River Remediation strategy for the Ganges River. At Wuuii Inc, he designed computer vision architectures using multi-modal earth observation datasets to improve wildfire risk assessments.

Sarthak is pursuing a master’s program in environmental studies to further engage with spatio-temporal ecological systems, especially how they are impacted by climate variability. After that, he plans to undertake projects which will focus on designing scalable, resource-efficient modelling approaches for active environmental challenges in the Global South. As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Sarthak is aiming to integrate data-driven insights with environmental justice and policymaking to help guide global conservation practices. The scope and scale of interdisciplinary research needed to address the complexities of environmental resilience requires access to global networks, which he is eager to leverage during the fellowship period.

Abhishek Babbar

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowships
Project Title:	N.A.
Field of Study:	International Legal Studies
Home Institution:	Advocate, New Delhi, Delhi
Host Institution:	Yale Law School, New Haven, CT
Grant Start Month:	August 2026
Duration of Grant:	One year

Brief Bio:

Mr. Abhishek Babbar practices as an advocate in New Delhi. His work spans the breadth of public law, with particular emphasis on federalism, affirmative action, minority rights, and election regulation.

Abhishek graduated from NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. He has experience across a range of professional settings, including as an associate at a major law firm and as a judicial assistant to former Supreme Court judge Sanjay Kishan Kaul. He also worked on a Netflix series in a creative role. Alongside his practice, Abhishek has been closely involved with the Forum for Human Rights in Jammu & Kashmir, where he authored its annual reports and was later inducted into as a member.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow at Yale Law School, Abhishek is examining how legal frameworks can preserve electoral integrity and secure public trust in election outcomes. After his studies, he aims to contribute to democratic reform in India.

Arthita Banerjee

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowships
Project Title:	N.A.
Field of Study:	Sustainable Development/Sustainability
Home Institution:	Environmental Resources Management (ERM), Kolkata, West Bengal
Host Institution:	Columbia University, New York, NY
Grant Start Month:	August 2026
Duration of Grant:	One year

Brief Bio:

Ms. Arthita Banerjee is a consultant at Environmental Resources Management (ERM), where she works at the intersection of sustainability and development. Her work focuses on how environmental and social risks are assessed, priced, and managed within large-scale investments across emerging markets. She has advised on over 45 transactions across India and the Asia-Pacific region, working with institutions such as the World Bank – IFC, Green Climate Fund, and major private equity investors. Her sectoral experience spans renewable energy (hydro, solar, wind), transmission infrastructure, data centers, and healthcare and pharmaceuticals.

Arthita holds a BA LLB (Hons) from Hidayatullah National Law University. She is a Fellow of the Women in Climate & Energy Fellowship (WICEF) at EnergyLab, a major climate tech startup accelerator, where she was selected to a global cohort of sixteen and developed a parametric insurance model aimed at improving financial resilience to climate shocks. Her work reflects a broader interest in designing market-based mechanisms that make climate risk more effectively priced and managed.

Arthita was part of ERM’s Foundation Committee, where she supported initiatives advancing women’s livelihoods in the low-carbon economy through Swadhina, a non-profit organization, and mentored first-generation university students through the Bloomberg x Asian University for Women program.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Arthita is pursuing a Master’s in Climate Finance at Columbia University. She is deepening her understanding of how financial systems can be designed to respond to a changing climate, not only by managing risk but by directing capital toward more resilient and inclusive futures.

Pratiksha Sanjay Basarkar

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowships
Project Title:	N.A.
Field of Study:	International Legal Studies
Home Institution:	Lawyer, Mumbai, Maharashtra
Host Institution:	Harvard University, Boston, MA
Grant Start Month:	August 2026
Duration of Grant:	One year

Brief Bio:

Ms. Pratiksha S. Basarkar graduated with a BA LLB (Hons) from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore in 2018, where she was awarded the Heyning-Roelli Foundation Scholarship to attend a semester at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Since graduation, Pratiksha has worked as a litigation lawyer across roles. She began her career at a major law firm before joining Project 39A (now The Square Circle Clinic, NALSAR University of Law), a criminal justice organization. Here she led teams providing pro bono legal representation to persons sentenced to death before the Supreme Court of India and various High Courts, contributing to several acquittals and commutations of sentences. She has facilitated mitigation investigations and worked on strategic litigation addressing broader issues in the criminal justice system, such as unreliable forensic evidence and mental healthcare in prisons. Beyond litigation, she has written on new criminal laws and engaged with stakeholders including social workers and policy researchers through training and discussions.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Pratiksha is pursuing an LLM at Harvard Law School. She is studying comparative and interdisciplinary approaches to criminal law and systemic reform, with a focus on wrongful convictions, to inform litigation and reform efforts in India.

Shristi Borthakur

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowships
Project Title:	N.A.
Field of Study:	International Legal Studies
Home Institution:	Lawyer, New Delhi, Delhi
Host Institution:	Columbia University, New York, NY
Grant Start Month:	August 2026
Duration of Grant:	One year

Brief Bio:

Ms. Shristi Borthakur is a lawyer practicing in New Delhi and works on disability rights. Shristi’s work is deeply influenced by personal experience, driving her to focus on disability rights, especially for persons with mental and development disabilities. She works closely with persons with disabilities, caregivers, educators, and special schools to access legal protections, such as appointment of a guardian, travel regulations, access to higher education, insurance, estate planning, and so on. Her long-term goal is to contribute to the development of disability rights jurisprudence in India, including legal reforms addressing transition to adulthood, guardianship, training modules for lawyers and judges, and policy integration.

She holds a BA LLB degree from Symbiosis Law School. She worked for five years at the office of senior advocate Ms Arundhati Katju and also independently argued cases. She has worked on diverse cases ranging from civil to commercial and criminal to constitutional before the Supreme Court. Notably, Shristi has worked on the landmark case of marriage equality before the Indian Supreme Court, an experience that shaped her commitment to constitutional and social justice.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Shristi is pursuing a Master of Laws degree to undertake a study on the equivalent disability laws and processes in the United States and test their applicability to the existing framework in India. She is focusing on public and social infrastructure that exists in the US, and its impact on people with disabilities. Shristi plans to continue to build her independent litigation practice in India.

Pradip Das

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowships
Project Title:	N.A.
Field of Study:	Economics
Home Institution:	Gates Foundation, New Delhi, Delhi
Host Institution:	Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
Grant Start Month:	August 2026
Duration of Grant:	One year

Brief Bio:

Mr. Pradip Das is a consultant in the Inclusive Financial Systems team at the Gates Foundation, India, where he focuses on advancing digital financial inclusion for underserved communities. His work spans BC (business correspondent) agent network strengthening, digital merchant payments, and financial services for women, encompassing grant oversight, impact assessments, and the design of new financial inclusion initiatives in partnership with the Government of India.

Prior to the Gates Foundation, Pradip served as a Resident Representative at the World Bank Group, providing technical assistance to the National Rural Economic Transformation Project (NRETP), a flagship initiative under the Ministry of Rural Development implemented in partnership with the World Bank and IFC. Earlier, he led a nationally recognized, CSR award-winning financial inclusion project at CRISIL Foundation in Assam and served as Mission Executive at the Uttar Pradesh State Rural Livelihoods Mission where he developed state-level policies and launch strategies for community development programs.

Pradip holds a postgraduate diploma in environmental management from the Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Pradip is pursuing a Master of Science degree in economics at Arizona State University. His studies will sharpen his analytical skills to design and evaluate evidence-based digital finance interventions to improve formal credit access for underserved and women entrepreneurs in rural and low-income communities in India.

Raju Manjali Rhee Johnson

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowships
Project Title:	N.A.
Field of Study:	Public Health
Home Institution:	K-DISC (Kerala Development and Innovation Strategic Council), Government of Kerala, Government of Kerala, Kochi, Kerala
Host Institution:	Harvard University, Boston, MA
Grant Start Month:	August 2026
Duration of Grant:	One year

Brief Bio:

Dr. Raju Manjali Rhee Johnson is an award-winning pharmaceutical physician and med-tech innovator, currently leading the Kerala Genome Data Centre, a flagship genomics program under the Kerala Development and Innovation Strategic Council. His work focuses on leveraging genomics and digital health to enable population-scale public health transformation and economic development.

Dr. Raju began his career in pharmaceutical medical affairs before moving into strategy and leadership roles across digital health and med-tech. He has held key positions at Wolters Kluwer, supporting clinical decision systems across South Asia. He also served at Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, where he worked on advancing digital therapeutics and medical technologies. Dr. Rhee actively mentors and advises incubators, accelerators, and over 50 startups in healthcare and technology.

Beyond healthcare, Dr. Raju is a storyteller and creative practitioner. He has hosted a solo photography exhibition at Mumbai’s Jehangir Art Gallery. A sought-after speaker, he has delivered talks at more than 500 scientific forums and has also been featured at prominent literary platforms such as the Kerala Literature Festival, Global
AI Summit and other major management and tech conferences. He has authored multiple articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and contributed to national newspapers, shaping conversations at the intersection of healthcare, technology, and public policy.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow at Harvard University, Dr. Raju is pursuing a master’s in public health. His goal is to integrate med-tech innovation, genomics, and policy to design scalable, equitable public health solutions for India and other emerging economies.

Natasha Maheshwari

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowships
Project Title:	N.A.
Field of Study:	International Legal Studies
Home Institution:	Lawyer, New Delhi, Delhi
Host Institution:	Columbia University, New York, NY
Grant Start Month:	August 2026
Duration of Grant:	One year

Brief Bio:

Ms. Natasha Maheshwari is a constitutional and human rights lawyer. She graduated from the Maharashtra National Law University Mumbai in 2021, after which she has been practising in New Delhi – first at the chambers of Ms Vrinda Bhandari, and then with senior advocates Mr Shadan Farasat and Ms Warisha Farasat.

Natasha’s practice is focused on expanding, broadening, and reshaping the contours of the right to freedom of speech and expression in India, as well as limiting the increasingly aggressive attempts made by private and public institutions to interfere with this right.

Natasha has worked on more than 30 cases involving the regulation and restriction of speech, press freedoms, intermediary liability, and digital rights. Alongside litigation, Natasha has taught certificate courses on digital rights and cybercrimes, contributed to research and scholarship on the subject, and advised intergovernmental organisations and corporates on tech policy.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Natasha is studying comparative constitutional law and American constitutional law and theory. In particular, she wants to compare doctrine and standards of review used by Indian and American courts while determining the constitutionality of measures limiting free speech.

Blesson Mathew

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowships
Project Title:	N.A.
Field of Study:	Higher Education Administration
Home Institution:	Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi, Delhi
Host Institution:	Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Grant Start Month:	August 2026
Duration of Grant:	One year

Brief Bio:

Mr. Blesson Mathew is a governance and public policy professional working at the intersection of policy, diplomacy, and international development. A graduate of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, with a degree in English and political science, he went on to pursue a master’s in international relations and diplomacy on a Chevening scholarship.

With over a decade’s experience in public policy implementation, Blesson has worked extensively with the Government of India, particularly within the Ministry of Rural Development, driving large-scale development initiatives. He has contributed to India’s foreign policy engagements through his work with the Ministry of External Affairs, including in key divisions such as the G20 Secretariat. During India’s G20 presidency, he played a role in supporting negotiations around the New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration and was closely associated with the Trade and Investment Working Group and Startup20 engagement track.

Beyond government, Blesson has designed and led global fellowship programmes aligned with India’s Neighbourhood First policy. He has helped establish self-learning ecosystems across Rwanda and other parts of Africa, creating accessible, open spaces for youth-led innovation and skill development.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Blesson is now focused on integrating education policy with diplomacy to drive systemic change in India’s higher education landscape. His long-term vision is to build world-class academic institutions that advance the vision of Viksit Bharat and democratize access to transformative education.

Aparimita Pratap

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowships
Project Title:	N.A.
Field of Study:	International Legal Studies
Home Institution:	Lawyer, New Delhi, Delhi
Host Institution:	Columbia University, New York, NY
Grant Start Month:	August 2026
Duration of Grant:	One year

Brief Bio:

Ms. Aparimita Pratap is a lawyer with over seven years of experience, currently working at the intersection of criminal law, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and access to justice for marginalized communities in India. She holds a BA LLB (Hons) from The West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata (2019).

Aparimita designed and led a legal aid program at the Migration and Asylum Project, a New Delhi-based refugee legal aid center. Her work focused on increasing legal awareness on SGBV, training beneficiaries and creating community structures such as legal aid clinics and women’s groups where beneficiaries could openly discuss violence. She worked on strengthening the capacity of private and state actors to respond to SGBV, training paralegal volunteers, legal aid lawyers, women panchayats, and counsellors across Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh.

Alongside, Aparimita has represented over 100 survivors and built a network of lawyers to expand legal representation in SGBV cases. She has also used strategic litigation, including before the Delhi High Court, challenging coercive mediation in domestic violence cases. She now has independent practice and continues this work.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Aparimita is focusing on criminal law and trauma-informed, survivor-centric jurisprudence in SGBV cases. She is studying how legal frameworks in the United States protect survivors during investigation and trial and will bring these learnings back to India to challenge gaps in criminal law through litigation and advocacy. She will also continue her work to improve the legal aid system in India.

Manasa Ramakrishna

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowships
Project Title:	N.A.
Field of Study:	International Legal Studies
Home Institution:	Lawyer, New Delhi, Delhi
Host Institution:	Columbia University, New York, NY
Grant Start Month:	August 2026
Duration of Grant:	One year

Brief Bio:

Ms. Manasa Ramakrishna is a lawyer specializing in criminal law, constitutional rights, and the death penalty. She has worked at The Square Circle Clinic, NALSAR University of Law (formerly known as Project 39A) where she represented individuals on death row before the Supreme Court of India and various High Courts. Her work with prisoners and their families and the lived realities of the criminal justice system informs her interest in the structural and institutional dimensions of the criminal justice system. She has also contributed to research and strategic litigation at the intersection of criminal and constitutional law.

Manasa graduated from Jindal Global Law School with a BA LLB (Hons) degree in 2020. Thereafter, she worked at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas in Mumbai, where she advised on white-collar crime, arbitration, and commercial disputes. This experience sharpened her understanding of institutional processes and accountability, which continues to inform her approach to criminal law.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Manasa is studying criminal law and procedure and constitutional theory. She will engage with interdisciplinary approaches in the United States to deepen her understanding of the criminal justice system. Manasa hopes to build her litigation practice and contribute to rights-based criminal justice advocacy in India.

Shivangi Sharma

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowships
Project Title:	N.A.
Field of Study:	Higher Education Administration
Home Institution:	Kautilya School of Public Policy, Hyderabad, Telangana
Host Institution:	Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Grant Start Month:	August 2026
Duration of Grant:	One year

Brief Bio:

Ms. Shivangi Sharma is the General Manager (Programs) at Kautilya School of Public Policy in Hyderabad, where she oversees program design, curriculum development, academic and industry partnerships. She has co-developed and facilitated the adaptation of the Stanford Interpersonal Dynamics T-Group course for Indian classrooms. She has been associated with Kautilya since its founding in 2021, serving as Executive Assistant to Dean, Program Manager and General Manager.

Shivangi is a first-generation college graduate from a farming family of Ashoknagar district in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Mathematics from Rajdhani College, University of Delhi and an MA in Liberal Studies from Ashoka University, where she was also awarded a Young India Fellowship. She also holds a senior diploma in Kathak from Gandharva Mahavidyalaya.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellow, Shivangi is pursuing an MA in International Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. Her studies focus on global and comparative education policy and economics of education. She plans to strengthen international collaborations in Indian higher education and build institutions that are accessible to students from underserved communities.

Naveen Kumar Banageri Thimmappa

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowships
Project Title:	N.A.
Field of Study:	Journalism and Mass Communication
Home Institution:	Writer, Independent Filmmaker, Educator, Hosabale, Karnataka
Host Institution:	New York University, New York, NY
Grant Start Month:	August 2026
Duration of Grant:	Two years

Brief Bio:

Mr. Naveen Kumar is a writer, filmmaker, and educator from Hosabale, a village in Soraba Taluk, Karnataka. A first-generation student from an indigenous community and a strong believer in diversity and representation, his work is rooted in community-led storytelling and focuses on rural life, caste, memory, and social justice. Naveen has written, directed, shot, and edited several short films made collaboratively with over a hundred people from his village. His films have been screened at international film festivals and have won multiple awards. He has also conducted grassroots filmmaking workshops at major educational institutions across Karnataka.

Naveen holds a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from St Joseph’s University, Bangalore, and a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication from Bangalore University. He writes in both Kannada and English. His personal essay Track 01 won the Barbra Naidu Award for Personal Essay (2023) and is included in the third-year BA English syllabus at St Joseph’s University. He is the recipient of the Toto Award for Kannada Creative Writing (2024) and was recognized as a Deccan Herald Changemaker in 2026. Naveen has collaborated with multiple non-profit organizations as a filmmaker and social media consultant. He also runs Bheemashaale, a community learning center in his village, where he works with over 150 first-generation learners from indigenous backgrounds through arts-based education.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Naveen is deepening his practice in ethical, community-centered documentary storytelling through global artistic and academic engagement. He plans to strengthen independent documentary cinema and grassroots storytelling in India.

Dr. Anand

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellowships
Project Title:	Urban Greening in a Globalizing World: An Applied Research Agenda for Livable and Sustainable Cities
Field of Study:	Urban and Regional Planning
Home Institution:	Independent Scholar, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh
Host Institution:	University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA
Grant Start Month:	October 2026
Duration of Grant:	12 months

Brief Bio:

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.

Hindol Chakraborty

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellowships
Project Title:	Lieux de Mémoire: Revisiting the Armenian Genocide through the Postmemory of Select American and Indian Women writers
Field of Study:	Language/Literature/Linguistics
Home Institution:	Swami Vivekananda University, Kolkata, West Bengal
Host Institution:	Clark University, Worcester, MA
Grant Start Month:	October 2026
Duration of Grant:	Nine months

Brief Bio:

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.

Diptarup Ghosh Dastidar

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellowships
Project Title:	Deconstructing the Indian Graphic Novel: Role of the American Comics Tradition and Communities in Shaping Indian Graphic Narratives
Field of Study:	Language/Literature/Linguistics
Home Institution:	Independent Scholar, Serampore, West Bengal
Host Institution:	University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
Grant Start Month:	January 2027
Duration of Grant:	12 months

Brief Bio:

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

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellowships
Project Title:	Recast(e)ing the Comic Body: Slapstick Comedy in Tamil Cinema
Field of Study:	Visual Arts
Home Institution:	Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Bengaluru, Karnataka
Host Institution:	Columbia University, New York, NY
Grant Start Month:	October 2026
Duration of Grant:	12 months

Brief Bio:

Dr. B. Geetha is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Liberal Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at 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.

Haseena Naji

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellowships
Project Title:	Indigenous Ritual Speech: Comparing Narrative and Performance among the Kurichya (India) and Gullah/Geechee (US)
Field of Study:	Anthropology
Home Institution:	Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Host Institution:	Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society, Elon University, Elon, NC
Grant Start Month:	January 2027
Duration of Grant:	12 months

Brief Bio:

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.