Archives: Meet Our USA Fulbrighters

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.

Tsering Lhamo

Tsering Lhamo is a first-generation Tibetan-American PhD student. Her research is taking place under the guidance of Dr. Emily Yeh at the Geography Department of the University of Colorado Boulder. Coming from an interdisciplinary background in international development and global health, Tsering’s research interests center on the intersections of sustainable development, political ecology, traditional medicines, and cross-border trade within the Himalayan region. As an American India Foundation (AIF) William J. Clinton Fellow from 2017–2018, Tsering worked with the Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative (MANSI) to conduct baseline research and interventions on reproductive health among adolescents in underserved female populations in rural mountain communities in Uttarakhand, India. Trained in biomedical sciences, Tsering has worked as a laboratory associate at the Yale New Haven Hospital. She has also served as an AmeriCorps volunteer where she tutored young students from underprivileged communities in Washington, D.C. Tsering holds a master’s degree in international development from the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland, where she specialized in environmental sustainability and global health. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international studies with a minor in biology from the American University in Washington, D.C. Tsering is also a recipient of the U.S. Department of Education’s 2023 Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for studying Nepali language.

Found in the Himalayas, the caterpillar fungus is an assemblage of organisms composed of a fungal body protruding from the head of its moth larva host. Valued within Chinese medicine and in biopharmaceuticals for its therapeutic functions, the fungus has been worth more than its weight in gold on the market. As a result, the fungus collection and trade are a source of as much as 50-90% of cash income for the Bhutia, Lepcha, Nepalese, and Tibetan people who participate in the fungus harvest and trade in the Indian Himalayas. However, not much is known about the caterpillar fungus trade in the Eastern Indian Himalayas. Tsering’s research seeks to understand the lived experiences of Himalayan communities in Siliguri region of North Bengal in the larger West Bengal state, using the caterpillar fungus trade as an analytical tool. Tsering will be working under the guidance of Dr. Swatasiddha Sarkar from the Centre for Himalayan Studies at North Bengal University in Siliguri, West Bengal. Dr. Sarkar’s expertise in the regional geography combined with his scholarship on labor and ethnicity will be paramount to my research on the caterpillar fungus trade in the region.

Shirley Kim-Ryu

Shirley Kim-Ryu is a filmmaker and poet based in Los Angeles and Seoul. By oscillating between genres and mediums, Shirley’s work generates an energy of the primordial, deeply rooted in improvisation, chaos, and arriving in land-based rituals and practices.

A recent poetry fellow of the VONA (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation) workshop, the Juniper Institute for Young Writers, and the Disquiet Literary Program, Shirley holds an MFA in film direction (from UCLA) and an MFA in poetry (from California Institute of the Arts), and has been the recipient of the 2022 LEF Moving Image Fund, the Fritt Ord Fund, the Nordisk Kulturfond OPSTART, the Vikken Fund, the Norwegian Film Institute Award, the James Bridges Award in Film Directing, the Hollywood Foreign Press Award, and the Mary Pickford Award. Shirley’s films have been screened in international film festivals.

Shirley is a co-founder of the LA-based Solano Film Collective which creates various forms of films, including in collaborations with LA-based arts organizations like Archeffect Design, MOCA, and Clockshop.

Shirley’s Fulbright-Nehru research project involves working in kinship with the lived culture of the ritual dance theyyam in Kannur, Kerala. In the context of an intersection between Korean and Indian indigenous spirits, she is exploring artistic inquiries and getting closer to a deeper understanding of artistic roots and their identity in multiplicity. In this regard, she is seeking answers to questions such as: how does theyyam process the idea of gender in the language of nature; how does it function in the community to serve its members; and how has it digested the communal blues caused by colonialism, class, and patriarchy?

Anagha Kikkeri

Anagha Kikkeri has a passion for education, community engagement, and public service. At the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, Anagha was the first woman of Indian descent to be elected as the student body president; she graduated from UT as a Distinguished Scholar in the liberal arts honors program in May 2021.

During her undergraduate years, Anagha garnered numerous honors, fellowships, scholarships, and awards. She was recognized as the Outstanding Senior of the Class of 2021 and was also selected to be part of the Dean’s Dozen by the Office of the Dean of Students. In 2020, she received the prestigious Hyperion Award for her exceptional contributions to the university community. Anagha was inducted into Pi Sigma Alpha and also became a member of the Order of Omega.

Anagha actively engages in extracurricular and community activities. She was a member of the LBJ Women’s Campaign School. She has held positions of leadership, such as the chairwoman of the Auditing Committee for the Texas State Society and the vice president of Diversity and Inclusion for the Texas University Panhellenic Council. Notably, Anagha delivered a commencement address to an audience of over 30,000 people at UT in 2021. She also performed a personal narrative of her life experiences as a woman in the show “Amplify”.

In terms of professional experience, Anagha has made significant contributions to the political arena. She worked as a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion associate and also served as a Mobilization Program coordinator at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, D.C. Besides, she has served as a healthcare staff assistant to Senator Dianne Feinstein, thereby connecting with upwards of two million Californians.

Anagha’s other interests include boxing, painting, the Spanish language, mehndi, South Asian history, basketball, piano, and Frida Kahlo’s art.

Anagha’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is studying what young, urban, university-attending women believe about how they can break the glass ceiling in politics. For this, she is examining the structural causes behind the “glass ceiling”, the levels of political awareness, and the pathways forward for young Indian women. In this context, she is conducting interviews with women from diverse backgrounds. The project is significant because its results can help empower young women to shatter the glass ceiling.

Aruna Kharod

Aruna Kharod is an ethnomusicology PhD candidate at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. She holds an MMus in ethnomusicology (2021) as well as a dual BA in Hindi language and literature and South Asian studies, all from UT Austin. Aruna’s doctoral dissertation examines transnational exchanges and histories of the sitar-making industry. Her research has been published in the International Journal of Traditional Arts and has been generously supported by the Smithsonian Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology, the Presser Foundation, Texas Folklife, and UT Austin’s most prestigious doctoral research award, the Donald D. Harrington Dissertation Fellowship (2022–23).

As a performing artist, Aruna is trained in Hindustani music and bharatanatyam dance. She studied sitar under the guidance of Professor Emeritus Stephen Slawek, a senior disciple of the late Pandit Ravi Shankar. She is currently under the training of renowned sitarist Vidushi Sahana Banerjee. Aruna teaches and performs bharatanatyam in central Texas as part of her guru, Dr. Sreedhara Akkihebbalu’s Kaveri Natya Yoga School of Bharatanatyam. She has also studied bharatanatyam and odissi intensively in India. Besides, Aruna has performed and taught Javanese gamelan for over five years.

Aruna is an ethnographic storyteller who is passionate about intergenerational and community-based work. Her notable projects include leading a project on Partition Songs in the Indian-American diaspora (2021); being involved in a digital humanities resource program on American sitar-making (2022); and being part of a mentorship programming series for women PhD students (2023). Aruna is also a photographer and budding documentary maker who focuses on hereditary and traditional luthiers and artists in the U.S. and India, as well as on intergenerational South Asian-American life. As an arts educator, Aruna leads and develops programming for audiences in public libraries, schools, senior centers, and museums around central Texas. She has worked as an artist-in-residence (Blanton Museum of Art, 2017), public outreach and programming liaison (Humanities Texas, 2021), and as a qualitative research consultant (Jugal’s Literature Festival, 2023).

Aruna’s Fulbright-Nehru project is studying sitar performance through individualized, immersive, traditional taalim, or training, under the tutelage of Vidushi Sahana Banerjee. She is also practicing the nuances of improvisatory techniques and musical theory as rooted in Banerjee’s distinctive interpretation of the Rampur Senia gharana.