Fellows, Artists, Affiliates and Student Associates

SCHOLARS Fellows, Artists, Affiliates and Student Associates

The Mittal Institute offers fellowships to scholars and practitioners from South Asia to utilize the university’s resources to contribute to self-driven, independent research within a variety of disciplines.

/ Fellowships — BABAR ALI FELLOWSHIP — BAJAJ TRUST VISITING RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP — MITTAL INSTITUTE INDIA FELLOWSHIP (MIIF) — PAKISTAN IN-REGION RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP — RAGHUNATHAN FAMILY FELLOWSHIP — VISITING ARTIST FELLOWSHIP

/ Research Affiliates

/ Graduate Student Associates

The Mittal Institute provides ever-expanding opportunities for scholarly and artistic exchange between Harvard and South Asia. With the generous support of our donors, the Institute has launched several new on-campus residencies as well as an exciting new initiative to host new postdoctoral scholars at our New Delhi office. We are also expanding our offering of in-region opportunities outside of India to provide exceptional scholars in South Asia with new ways to work with faculty while remaining in their home countries.

The Mittal Institute continues to invest in our Scholars Program as it grows in scope and expands in reach. A new Program Coordinator has been working closely with Institute Fellows, Research Affiliates, and Graduate Student Associates (GSAs) to connect them to Harvard faculty and programs, elevate the visibility of their work, and provide new ways to advance their scholarship and take advantage of the wide variety of resources at Harvard. New activities this year included a Library Research Orientation with the Head of Academic Partnerships and liaison to South Asian Studies at the Harvard Libraries, as well as a GSA Roundtable to provide space for South Asia-focused PhD students to learn from each other’s research. Planned activities for the future include:

— LMSAI networking hour and casual afternoon tea — Private tours of Harvard Museums with a focus on South Asian collections — Walking tour of historical Boston for Visiting Scholars — Tour of Museum of Fine Arts and other Boston museums — Op-ed writing workshop — Data science and visualization training

Fellowships

The Babar Ali Fellowship supports advanced degree-holders and recent PhD recipients in their continued research in areas related to Pakistan.

Clockwise: Jennifer Leaning (left) visits an exhibit by VAF Mehwish Abid; S.V. Subramanian (left) with Mayanka Ambade; Yaqoob Bangash at a Mittal Institute event.

The Bajaj Trust Visiting Research Fellowship supports scholars who hold a PhD or terminal degree with priority given to those who have not had past opportunities to access Harvard’s resources, who have primarily been educated at institutions in South Asia, and who have a research interest in India.

The Mittal Institute India Fellowship (MIIF) is a unique opportunity that funds highly qualified postdoctoral researchers focused on India or connected with India to be based at the Mittal Institute’s New Delhi office and collaborate remotely with Harvard faculty.

The Pakistan In-Region Research Fellowship supports outstanding junior faculty from reputable universities across Pakistan. Fellows reside in Pakistan and are mentored remotely by a Harvard faculty member in their area of research. The Raghunathan Family Fellowship supports recent PhD recipients in the humanities and social sciences with their research on historical or contemporary South Asia. The Raghunathan Fellow is in-residence for one academic year in the Cambridge office.

The Visiting Artist Fellowship is a unique opportunity for mid-career visual artists from around South Asia to spend eight weeks on the Harvard campus. The VAF differs from a typical artist residency program in that it is research-centered, providing artists with the vast resources of Harvard’s intellectual community to enhance their artistic practice. While the VAFs are on campus, they are mentored by a Harvard faculty member in their area of research interest.

Research Affiliates

The Mittal Institute’s Research Affiliates contribute to Harvard’s scholarship on South Asia through their wealth of expertise on the region, from political economy to public health.

Graduate Student Associates

The Mittal Institute supports Graduate Student Associates (GSAs) from across the different schools at Harvard who conduct research focused on South Asia. This program aims to support graduate and Ph.D. students at Harvard and is centered on the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas.

KHYATI TRIPATHI Bajaj Fellow India

Khyati is a death scholar and tries to bring together events, emotions and practices related to death to explore the psychosocial significance and intricate connections between them. Her work lies at the intersection of social anthropology, psychology, and psychoanalysis. She completed her PhD from the University of Delhi.

YAQOOB BANGASH Fulbright Fellow Pakistan Yaqoob Khan Bangash is the 2022-23 United States Educational Foundation in Pakistan (USEFP) Fulbright Fellow. A historian of modern South Asia, Dr. Bangash is Associate Professor, Department of Governance and Global Studies and Director, Centre for Governance and Policy at Information Technology University, Lahore, Pakistan. He studies Pakistan as a post-colonial state – its state formation, identity, and conflicts. He authored A Princely Affair: Accession and Integration of Princely States in Pakistan, 1947-55 .

VIDYA SUBRAMANIAN Raghunathan Family Fellow India

Vidya Subramanian is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests lie University of Sindh, Pakistan; M.Ed. in English Language Teaching from the University of Glasgow, UK; and a PhD in Language and Literacy Education (TESOL & World Language Education) with distinction from the University of Georgia, USA. He is a Fulbright alumnus.

at the intersection of technologies and societies. Her current research investigates the changing nature of citizenship in the technological society we now inhabit. Focusing on India, her research is loosely framed by two large issues: the first is of the colonization of the everyday so-called real world by the digital; and the second is how power permeates and is implicated in such technologies.

LIAQUAT CHANNA Syed Babar Ali Fellow Pakistan

Liaquat Ali Channa serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering & Management Sciences (BUITEMS), Quetta, Pakistan. He holds an MA in English with a silver medal from the MAYANKA AMBADE Mittal Institute India Fellow India

Mayanka is a demographer with an academic background in Economics and a deep interest in Sociology and Health Sciences. She has a Ph.D. in Population Studies from the International Institute for Population Sciences in Mumbai. During the fellowship, Mayanka will examine attitudes and access to healthcare utilization among older adults in India.

ANKUR PHUKAN Mittal Institute India Fellow India

Ankur has a Ph.D in History from the Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (affiliated with Jadavpur University in Kolkata). During the fellowship, Ankur will study the idea of indigeneity and how it is produced through performative practices by tracing Bihu, the national festival of Assam in the post-colonial electoral democratic context of South Asia. NADHRA KHAN Pakistan Fellow Pakistan

Nadhra Shahbaz Khan is Associate Professor of Art History at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan. A specialist in the history of art and architecture of the Punjab from the 16th to the early 20th century, her research covers the visual and material culture of this region during the Mughal, Sikh, and colonial periods. She is the author of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Samādhi in Lahore: A Summation of Sikh Architectural and Decorative Practices, a monograph published as the University of Bonn’s Studies in Asian Art and Culture (SAAC) series. She is the recipient of the LUMS Research Award, 2018-19.

MEHWISH ABID Visiting Artist Fellow Pakistan

Mehwish Abid is the principal architect at the Studio of Architecture, Research, and Design (S A R D). She is a trans-disciplinary academic and visual artist heading the School of Architecture, Design and Urbanism at IAC, Lahore. She has received distinctions for both her graduate and postgraduate dissertations at COMSATS University Islamabad and the University of Liverpool, UK. As a visual artist, she explores the formation of new methods of immersion through material culture and experiments with the medium of sound, text, image, and objects. Her practice is research-based andt roots itself in decolonial notions of investigation.

PRAGATI JAIN Visiting Artist Fellow India

Pragati Jain’s work draws attention to prevailing conflicts in civilized societies, where each one of us has similar aspirations, struggles, and persistent ideas of practicing equality. In an atmosphere of shared fear, confusion, and hope, she creates art about the likenesses that bind us.

BUNU DHUNGANA Visiting Artist Fellow Nepal

Bunu Dhungana uses photography as a medium to explore and question the world around her. While her personal projects center around gender, she has worked in a wide range of forms — from visual ethnography and non-profit work, to commercial and journalistic work. Dhungana believes that visual stories can reach out to people, engage them, and start conversations.

KALAIYARASAN ARUMUGAM Research Affiliate United States Post-Doctoral fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs in Brown University; Assistant Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, India NAVEEN BHARATHI Research Affiliate United States Postdoctoral Research Fellow, CASI, University of Pennsylvania; Raghunathan Family Fellow, 2019-2020

ATANU CHAKRABORTY Research Affiliate India Former Secretary to Government of India, Ministry of Finance ABDUL RAZAQUE CHANNA Research Affiliate Pakistan Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Sindh, Jamshoro; Syed Babar Ali Fellow, 20192020

SANJEEV CHOPRA Research Affiliate India Former Additional Chief Secretary to the Government of West Bengal, Departments of Industry, Commerce & Enterprises MARIAM CHUGHTAI Research Affiliate Pakistan Associate Dean and Assistant Professor, LUMS School of Education; Pakistan Programs Manager, The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University

RONAK DESAI Research Affiliate United States Associate, Paul Hastings

HARDEEP DHILLON Research Affiliate United States Post-Doctoral Fellow in Law and Inequality, American Bar Foundation/National Science Foundation

SWAGATO GANGULY Research Affiliate India Associate Editor, Times of India

RAHUL GUPTA Research Affiliate India Senior Fellow, Harvard University, Advanced Leadership Initiative

SEHJ KASHYAP Research Affiliate India Fellow, India Digital Health Network AKSHAY MANGLA Research Affiliate United Kingdom Associate Professor in International Business, University of Oxford

RAJEESH MENON Research Affiliate India Healthcare Technology Leader

DINYAR PATEL Research Affiliate India Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts, S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research

ROLUAHPUIA Research Affiliate India Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology-Roorkee

SALIL SHETTY Research Affiliate United Kingdom Vice President, Open Society Foundations’ Global Programs

IAN TALBOT Research Affiliate United Kingdom Professor Emeritus, History of Modern South Asia, University of Southampton; Former Head of the History Department and Director of the Centre for Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies

IMTIAZ UL HAQ Research Affiliate United States Economist, World Bank

MICHAEL VAN HAVILL Research Affiliate New Zealand Healthcare Product Design Leader VERONICA VARGAS Research Affiliate Chile Economist: Global Health, Health Policy, and Pharmaceuticals

ASHUTOSH VARSHNEY Research Affiliate United States Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science, Brown University; Director, Center for Contemporary South Asia, Brown University LAURA WEINSTEIN Research Affiliate United States Ananda Coomaraswamy Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

FATIMA ZAHRA Research Affiliate United States / Bangladesh Postdoctoral Fellow, T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University

RAILE ROCKY ZIIPAO Research Affiliate India Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay; Raghunathan Family Fellow 2017-2018

MUHAMMAD ZAMAN Research Affiliate United States Professor, College of Engineering; Faculty Fellow, Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Boston University BENNETT COMERFORD Graduate Student Associate

Graduate Student Associate Graduate Student Associate

Graduate Student Associate

Graduate Student Associate Graduate Student Associate

Graduate Student Associate

PhD Candidate, Comparative Studies, Committee on the Study of Religion, Harvard University

AKSHAY DIXIT

PhD Candidate, Political Economy & Government, Harvard University RONAK JAIN

PhD Candidate, Economics, Harvard University

HANSONG LI

PhD Candidate, Government, Harvard University

TIANJIA (TINA) LIU

PhD Candidate, Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University

AIDAN MILLIFF

PhD Candidate, International Relations and Security Studies, Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

BLAIR READ

PhD Candidate, Comparative Politics and Methodology, Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology