Top row, left to right: Ameena Qureshi, Anandita Ayesha Rangarajan , Atiyab Sultan, Jasmin Higo, Kartik Srivastava, Lauren Rice, Madhavi Jha; Middle row, left to right: Malvika Dwivedi, Mitul Iyengar, Nigel Gray, Nikhil Kumar, Nitin Ranjan, Phusathi Liyanarachchi, Priyanka Chahal; Bottom row, left to right: Rimshi Agrawal, Sarthak Agarwal, Savalee Tikle, Seton Uhlhorn, Sri Sathvik Rayala, Surbhi Bharadwaj.
Each year, the Mittal Institute welcomes Graduate Student Associates (GSAs) from across Harvard’s schools to advance research on South Asia. The program fosters interdisciplinary exchange by bringing together graduate and Ph.D. students to share ideas and strengthen their work. This year, 20 new and returning GSAs will collaborate with the Institute through monthly working group meetings, where they present and receive feedback on their research, participate in with Faculty Cabinet presentations, attend internal panel discussions, and more.
Graduate Student Associates
Ameena Qureshi is a Master of Design Engineering student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Ameena’s research interests include mapping social systems to scale innovative solutions.
Anandita Ayesha Rangarajan is in her second year of the Master of Architecture in Urban Design program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. At Harvard, her work has been focused on cities shaped by conflict, examining the embedded social codes in their urban form. Her research will investigate patterns that emerge in the built environment in the aftermath of violent outbreaks, tracing cycles of rupture, ruin and reconstruction.
Atiyab Sultan is a career civil servant in the Pakistan Administrative Service since 2016. Her current research focuses on gender, migration and the bureaucracy and is informed both by her academic training and her experiences working as a civil servant in Pakistan.
Jasmin Higo is a Ph.D. student specializing in health systems and health economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Harvard School of Public Health. She is also a Doctoral Fellow with the Harvard Environmental Economics program. Her research examines how shocks, including environmental shocks, affect health outcomes, and livelihoods with a focus on resilience and the dynamics of vulnerability and recovery across contexts.
Kartik Srivastava is a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. His research focuses on development economics, labor economics, and political economy. His current projects include studying the role of segmentation in labor markets and in firm networks in India, as well as how the delivery of public services in rural areas can be improved with the use of technology-aided accountability mechanisms.
Lauren Rice is a Ph.D. candidate in Business Economics, studying development economics, health economics, and industrial organization. Her research investigates how market structure and technology influence healthcare provider behavior and patient outcomes in India.
Madhavi Jha is a Ph.D. student in Economics at Harvard University. Her research focuses on development economics and public finance, with an emphasis on health and education in low-resource settings. Her current projects include studying how household decision-making shapes preventive care for non-communicable diseases, the role of peer learning and teacher incentives in improving student outcomes, and how strengthening provider-patient interactions can improve healthcare delivery in rural systems.
Malvika Dwivedi is an M.Des Publics student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her work sits at the intersection of design and policy seen through varied socio-economic lenses. At Harvard her interests span broadening the understanding of what design in the global south means.
Mitul Iyengar is a Master’s in Design Engineering candidate at Harvard University, where her research focuses on advancing equitable systems in South Asia through the integration of technology, data, and design thinking. Her current research interests include the investigation of systemic drivers of early and often medically unnecessary hysterectomies in rural India.
Nigel Gray is a Ph.D. student at Harvard University studying Education with a concentration in Human Development. His research examines how parental expectations, gendered norms, and cultural values shape Sri Lankan adolescents’ educational and career decisions, particularly as they relate to identity, obligation, and psychological well-being.
Nikhil Kumar is a Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy (Economics Track) from Bihar, India. His research focuses on development economics, labor economics, and political economy. His current projects include studying the role of classroom environment, regular monitoring, and teacher incentives in student academic outcomes and socio-emotional skills; what determines employee referrals and retention among rural migrant workers in urban areas; and how empowering citizens and tax collectors shapes their interaction as well as tax collection.
Nitin Ranjan is a Master in Public Policy candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School and currently serves in the Indian Revenue Service, Government of India. His work lies at the intersection of caste, democratic accountability, and data justice in South Asia. His research interrogates how the absence of caste-disaggregated data perpetuates structural invisibility and erodes democratic equity.
Phusathi Liyanarachchi is pursuing a Master of Theological Studies at the Harvard Divinity School with a focus on Gender, Sexuality, and Religion. Her research interests lie at the intersections of literature and religious studies with a focus on grief, mourning, psychoanalysis, and gender—especially pertaining to folk or pre-modern literature as well as ritual practice in South Asian contexts.
Priyanka Chahal, MD, is pursuing her Master of Medical Sciences in Global Health Delivery at Harvard Medical School. A first‑generation doctor, she is dedicated to addressing the structural, social, and political determinants of health to improve outcomes for marginalized communities. Currently her master’s thesis focuses on preventing drug‑resistant tuberculosis by applying the Social Ecological Model to explore the social, cultural, and structural factors influencing treatment acceptance and completion.
Rimshi Agrawal is a practicing architect pursuing her Master of Architecture in Urban Design (MAUD) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her research examines the lack of reliable spatial data in Indian cities and the challenges it poses for inclusive planning and governance. She explores how open urban data ecosystems, supported by civic technology and participatory methods, can help bridge these gaps.
Sarthak Agarwal is a doctoral student of Population Health Sciences with a focus on Public Health Nutrition. He graduated with a Master of Public Policy specializing in Food and Nutrition Policy from the University of Minnesota and studied food science during his undergraduate in India. His academic interests include food security and nutrition as well as the policies and laws governing them.
Savalee Tikle is an Urban Design graduate student at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. An architect and urban research practitioner from Mumbai, she specializes in urban innovations and design paradigms. Across her career, Savalee has led community-based research addressing grassroots issues, contributed to policy drafting, and conducted multi-sectoral studies on urban development, transportation, waste management, poverty, and gender dynamics.
Seton Uhlhorn is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of South Asian Studies, specializing in classical Urdu literature with particular interest in form, genre, and performance. Seton’s research revisits aspects of literary history often overlooked or misrepresented during the late colonial period, the effects of which continue to permeate contemporary discussions of Urdu literature.
Sri Sathvik Rayala is a graduate student pursuing a Master of Theological Studies at the Harvard Divinity School. His research interests broadly concern the religious traditions and histories of medieval and early modern India, particularly southern India.
Surbhi Bharadwaj is a joint degree candidate in the MBA and MPA International Development at Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School. Her primary interests cover technology, economic development, and climate adaptation in South Asia.