Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Program Archives - Page 6 of 14

Lilith Saylor

Lilith Saylor is interested in challenging the assumption that technology and rural spaces exist in contradiction and believes that rural spaces exist as integral, active contributors to the globalized world. An at-large scholar with a background in economics and development studies, as well as family ties in Kentucky’s Appalachian region, Lilith is both excited by and critical of technology’s role in rural development. She graduated from Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2020, with majors in economics, political science, and international relations. She went on to work in startups as one of the founding team members of BioSolution Designs, and also wrote critically on biometric technology and its political and socioeconomic entanglements in her paper, “Suspicion Encoded: Women of Color and Biometric Technology in the United States”, which was published by California Polytechnic State University’s sprinkle journal. She has also spoken on the importance of building technology by considering the right to privacy, in her workshop, “Built to Protect”, at Technica Hackathon 2021 and TechTogether Atlanta 2022.

Lilith’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining the factors influencing active rural digital engagement by comparing the interests, needs, and values of smallholder family farms in Karnataka to the digital technologies they consume. Bengaluru’s digital agritech startups depend on their ability (and obligation) to engage with smallholders as decision-making consumers, thereby giving researchers an unprecedented chance to reevaluate existing frameworks for encouraging rural digital participation. While exploring the mutual influences between smallholder family farms and digital technology, Lilith’s project is also highlighting the ways that rural regions are shaping their own digital future with their unique concerns, interests, and economic decisions.

Rafa Sattar

Rafa Sattar graduated from Macaulay Honors College at CUNY Hunter College in 2020 as a salutatorian with a BA in political science. Rafa is currently pursuing her master’s in nonprofit management at Columbia University. There, she is one of the two winners of the Excellence in Academic Leadership Award for the 2022–2023 academic year. She is also a 2022 recipient of the Diana Award, one of the most prestigious accolades a young person can receive for their humanitarian work. Rafa is founder and president of Fera Foundation, an international nonprofit that delivers tailored educational services based on the needs of the most vulnerable children. In 2020, she launched the CARE (Countering Adversity via Remote Education) Teaching Fellowship at a girls’ orphanage where she aimed to help the children prepare for their exams and procure meaningful mentors; by adapting a dual teacher system, Rafa envisioned a future where online learning could overcome barriers to educational equity. Since then, Rafa has been managing a team of 70 remote teachers from seven countries and 100 weekly synchronous and asynchronous classes at more than 200 schools and orphanages. The online classes for grades 1–12 integrate curricula, interactive resources, and teaching techniques adapted from the U.S. education system. Rafa also serves on the board of trustees of the UK-based charity, Communities Against Gender-Based Violence International. After her Fulbright fellowship, she hopes to pursue a JD in the U.S. to defend the educational rights of women and children around the world.

In her free time, she enjoys early morning runs, watching classic Bengali films, and visiting art museums.

Rafa’s Fulbright-Nehru research is exploring how innovative social interventions in West Bengal apply localization strategies to promote educational equity. Under the supervision of Dr. Devi Vijay of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Rafa is attempting to determine how community-centered approaches to social innovation in India can apply to the Fera Foundation. She is also researching community-centered approaches to organizing and also the factors that catalyze acceptance for social change in India.

Abhiyudh Rajput

Abhiyudh Rajput (they/them/theirs) holds a BS in environmental health and a BA in cultural anthropology from the University of Rochester. Professionally, they are experienced in clinical, qualitative, and wet-lab research, with a paper published on a potential therapy for diabetes. Studying a medical treatment led Abhiyudh toward the path of preventive health as they felt they could have a greater impact on creating conditions that prevent diseases. This realization, combined with their fields of discipline, led Abhiyudh to study urban planning as they began to realize how much of one’s health is determined by the design and layout of their city; for example, street design dictating whether one walks or drives, thus impacting exercise levels, mental health, and likelihood of injury.

Abhiyudh’s interest in India stems from their heritage as well as their exploration of cultural phenomena such as nation-building, caste, and personhood through their anthropology degree. This degree coursework culminated in a senior project that explored how Indian films create a collective narrative around the communal unrest caused by the Partition. They hope to apply this appreciation for human subjectivity and cultural forces in their personal and professional life. Beyond critically exploring their culture, Abhiyudh has engaged with India through their involvement with the community-based health organization SOVA in Odisha. During their four years as an undergraduate, they developed a strong relationship with the SOVA community and assisted with fund-raising for programs such as adolescent reproductive health education and computer literacy.

Aside from academics, Abhiyudh is interested in music, films, and photography. In their free time, they enjoy being creative, making mashups of songs, taking photographs of streetscapes and friends, and concocting recipes that blend cultures. They enjoy exploring cities, both familiar and unfamiliar, eating their way through New York City’s Chinatown or taking a solo trip to Mexico City to practice Spanish.

Abhiyudh’s Fulbright-Nehru project is studying the impact of increasingly automobile-centric built environments in Delhi on the safety of pedestrians and the subjective impacts on their mobility. In this context, 50 pairs of roadways are being analyzed via a matched case-control study design, measuring quantitative and qualitative data related to pedestrian safety and comparing it to the actual historical safety of these roadways. Overall, this project seeks to understand what can make Delhi’s roadways safer for its most vulnerable users and how can future pedestrian deaths and injuries be prevented.

Sriram Palepu

Sriram Palepu is a medical student with an interest in identifying and addressing healthcare disparities in South Asia. He completed his undergraduate studies from The University of Texas at Austin where he studied the heavy-metal contamination of the Godavari River. He is now a student of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. He has specific interests in HIV dermatology, gender-affirming care, and environmental health, and hopes to work in India throughout his career.

Sriram is pursuing his Fulbright-Nehru research at Mitr Clinic in Hyderabad in order to understand: the social and health history of trans, or hijra, communities in Hyderabad in terms of substance use and mental health; the extent to which trans individuals are currently satisfied with their external gender presentation; and the attitudes toward the importance of and accessibility of bodily and facial aesthetic procedures in affirming gender identity.

Catherine Nelli

Catherine Nelli completed her BA with honors from Brown University in May 2023. There she studied Sanskrit classics, comparative literature, and international and public Affairs. Catherine also completed two senior honors theses, “On Nineteenth-Century Indology: Divergences between Sanskrit and Colonial French and English Reception of Jayadeva’s Gītagovinda” and “Between Empire and Post-Colonial Nation-Building: A Comparative Analysis of Nationalism’s Role in French India’s Decolonization in Chandernagore and Pondicherry (1947–1954)”. She is interested in colonial, transcultural literary reception, Sanskrit commentaries, and Bengali interactions with Sanskrit texts.

For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Catherine is accessing the Asiatic Society of Bengal, the Bhaktivedanta Research Center in Kolkata, the French Institute of Pondicherry, and the Records Centre archives in Puducherry. She is also working with her affiliates in the Sanskrit and comparative literature departments at Jadavpur University and the École française d’Extrême-Orient to investigate French and English colonial reception of the Gītagovinda, a classical Sanskrit love poem, in tandem and tension with intracultural Sanskrit and Bengali commentarial receptions.

Clara Navarro

Originally from Austin, Texas, Clara Navarro is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. At the academy, Clara majored in Chinese and researched in the anthropology department where she published on the subject of gender relations in the military.

Upon graduation, Clara served in the United States Navy aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln where she was the deputy public affairs officer and principal assistant of the Media Department. Along with the crew, she completed a record-breaking around-the-world deployment from Norfolk, Virginia, to San Diego, California. Returning to land, she worked for two years as the media officer for the Europe, Africa, Central Navy Region headquarters in Naples, Italy. In this role, she coordinated communication between eight naval bases and seven host-nation embassies.

Honorably discharged from the Navy in 2022, Clara then earned a post-baccalaureate, pre-medical certificate at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., fulfilling the course requirements to apply to medical school. She is currently applying to medical schools across America.

Working with India’s National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Clara’s Fulbright-Nehru project is researching integrative mental healthcare services in the South Indian state of Karnataka. In a three-phase approach, her project is being executed first through archival research and clinical observation, then via interviews with practitioners and patients, and lastly, by reflection and synthesis. She is also assessing the hybrid practice of Ayurveda and allopathic mental healthcare that is growing in prevalence in India by focusing on both its successes and limitations, as well as on its impact on the community.

Priyamvada Nambrath

Priya Nambrath is a doctoral candidate in the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation research focuses on the applied practice of mathematics and astronomy in the sociocultural life of medieval and pre-modern Kerala. More broadly, she is interested in the intellectual and scientific history of India with a focus on cultural encounters, archaic modernisms, patronage, and pedagogy. Language and literature, textual culture, and visual art constitute additional related areas of her focus. She is also interested in folk traditions of art and knowledge in South India, and the ocean-facing histories of the region.

Priya brings her previous training and work experience in science and mathematics to her current research interests in Indian scientific and educational history. She has taught university courses in Sanskrit and Malayalam language and literature and has published a translation of a Sanskrit play. She has also been a highly successful coach for competitive mathematics at the school level.

Under the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, Priya is researching the pedagogical approaches and cultural concerns that shaped the mathematical culture of South India in the pre-colonial and early colonial periods, with a focus on the Kerala school of Indian mathematics. She is conducting archival research on untranslated mathematical materials composed both in Sanskrit and in the vernacular languages. Priya hopes that her research will contribute to increasing awareness about a plurality of scientific traditions and pedagogical strategies which can be profitably utilized in modern classrooms.

Manjot Multani

Manu Multani is a PhD candidate in anthropology and social change at the California Institute of Integral Studies in California. The institute has set its professional goals with the intention to not only emphasize the struggles of South Asian (SA) communities but also to seek, recognize, and name the solutions through which SA communities can resist. Manu has co-founded a podcast, ReThink Desi, to showcase such narratives. She is also an emerging filmmaker who focuses on visual aesthetics and storytelling for social change.

Manu has worked as a health program planner for several years for the Department of Public Health in San Francisco, engaging in local community discussions regarding public services such as hospital-based care, food insecurity, and homelessness; this has resulted in her acquiring expertise in understanding the lived realities of social determinants of health and disparities. Manu is also a two-time recipient of the Critical Language Scholarship for Panjabi in addition to the Hollywood Foreign Press Scholarship, Student Scholarship at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Education, and the Public Health Hero Award. She also has a master’s in global health and a bachelor’s in philosophy.

Manu currently lives in Los Angeles, California, with her partner and pup. During their free time, they like to read culturally diverse cookbooks to integrate new spices and techniques into their own cooking.

For her Fulbright-Nehru multimodal ethnographic study, Manu is investigating how young North Indian adults define and experience romantic, healthy relationships and how these reciprocally inform their sexual scripts. Through qualitative in-depth interviews and a participatory action research methodology – whereby the participants document short videos – she is attempting to produce a visual ethnography truer to the real experiences of the participants. Overall, this project unravels how sexual health and sexuality education become a part of what is known as “sexual literacy”, thereby contributing to the dearth of scholarship on North Indian youth sexualities.

Zachary Marhanka

Zachary Marhanka graduated from the University of Virginia in May 2022 with double majors in economics and global studies on environments and sustainability, and a minor in statistics. Under the Department of Economics Distinguished Majors Program, Zachary wrote an empirical thesis analyzing the adoption of community solar systems and their financial consequences for U.S. households. He further synthesized nationwide low-income solar policies and their application to his home state of Virginia for his global studies major capstone project. As an undergraduate and as a lawyer in his university’s judiciary committee, Zachary defended students accused of conduct violations. He also assisted fellow community residents as a volunteer income tax assistant. Besides, he was an editor for the Virginia Policy Review, a university policy journal. Outside of management consulting stints, Zachary has held internships with the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, the office of Congressman Gerry Connolly, and the United States Census Bureau. After graduating, he worked as a research assistant in development economics topics, analyzing tax collection data and gender-focused surveys in South Asia. He currently works as an analyst for ICF International where he assists the U.S. Department of Energy and several state governments in identifying energy supply-chain vulnerabilities. These experiences emphasize Zachary’s goal to pursue a career in energy and environmental policymaking, specifically around topics of energy justice and the development of community-centered renewable energy systems.

In his free time, Zachary enjoys hiking, cooking, playing volleyball, and gardening.

For his Fulbright-Nehru research project, Zachary is using a mixed survey and interview design to assess solar pump deployment within the Pandharpur tehsil of Maharashtra. In partnership with SVERI and Sobus Insight Forum, his research is engaging farmers in the 103 villages surrounding Pandharpur to collect data on solar adopter demographics and financial statements. Zachary’s work will provide a case study on solar irrigation and its consequences for agricultural businesses. The project’s output will also contribute to SVERI’s understanding of renewable energy deployment among local businesses, as well as provide a path toward the refinement of rural energy policy.

Sahita Manda

Sahita Manda is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health with a BS in public health sciences and a minor in biochemistry. She has had a longtime interest in working with people with disabilities, both through her research exploring stigma and neurodiversity as well as through her volunteer work. Sahita is also greatly interested in health policy and has interned at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. She hopes to pursue a career as a physician by integrating the principles of medicine and public health.

For her Fulbright-Nehru fellowship, Sahita is conducting nine months of research at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bengaluru, India. She is exploring parental perspectives and experiences related to seeking clinical and non-clinical services for adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD); she is also examining the navigation of the physical, sexual, cognitive, social, and emotional changes that come with adolescence. Sahita is also studying the lived experiences of adolescents with ASD. Using aggregated data from semi-structured interviews, she is identifying the current gaps in services and opportunities for this population, with the eventual goal of informing the development of culturally appropriate, holistic care.