LMSAI Faculty Research Grant Recipients (clockwise, left to right): Adaner Usmani, Andrea Wright, Aravinthan Samuel, Gary Adamkiewicz, Gautam Nair, Holly Samuelson, Martha Chen, Pawan Sinha, Rahul Mehrotra, Susan Crawford, Vishal Khandelwal.
2024-2025 Award Winners
The Mittal Institute annually supports faculty research projects that unite scholars from different fields and regions whose research relates to South Asia. Interdisciplinary scholarship, as well as projects that catalyze connectivity between scholars at Harvard and those in South Asia, are a funding priority. We are pleased to announce this year’s grant recipients and their research initiatives below.
Architecture in South Asia: Towards Building an Archive
Principal Investigator: Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Design and Planning and the John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; Founder/Principal of RMA Architects
Crafted Visions: India and the Values of Design, 1955 – 1985
Principal Investigator: Vishal Khandelwal, Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard’s Department of History of Art + Architecture
Educational Outreach at the Intersections of Art, Physics, and Optics
Principal Investigator: Aravinthan D.T. Samuel, Professor of Physics in Harvard’s Department of Physics & Center for Brain Science
Fostering an Industrial Revolution in Retail and Distribution in India
Principal Investigator: Gautam Nair, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School
Healthy Ambient Lighting Environments for Dhaka City
Principal Investigator: Gary Adamkiewicz, Associate Professor of Environmental Health Disparities at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
History of Punishment in India
Principal Investigator: Adaner Usmani, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Studies in Harvard’s Department of Sociology
Informal & Collective Enterprises in India: With A Special Focus on Women’s Enterprises
Principal Investigator: Martha Chen, Associate at the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University, and International Coordinator of the global research-policy-action network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)
Interviews in Bangladesh about Climate Adaptation
Principal Investigator: Susan Crawford, John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School
Steps Towards Expanding the Scale and Scope of Project Prakash
Principal Investigator: Pawan Sinha, Professor of Vision and Computational Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tired Hands and Pressured Care: Race, Gender, and Labor in Contemporary India
Principal Investigator: Andrea Wright, Lecturer of Anthropology and Resident Dean of Eliot House
Ultra-Low-Cost Solutions for Overheating and Sleep Disruption in Indian Homes
Principal Investigator: Holly Samuelson, Associate Professor of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design