Clockwise from top left: Fatima Fayyaz, Tresa Abraham, Sachin Kumar, Robert Lunkhopao Haokip, Aditya Kumar Anand.
The Mittal Institute’s Cambridge and India offices foster South Asian scholarship by hosting Fellows, Visiting Artist Fellows, and Graduate Student Associates. This spring 2026, we welcome three new researchers and welcome back two fellows who were with us this past fall.
Syed Babar Ali Fellow
Fatima Fayyaz is a researcher dedicated to exploring Persian mystical and epic literature. For her post-doctoral research fellowship at Mittal Institute, Harvard, Fatima will be doing a comparative study of āshūrā poetry in Urdu and Persian, tracing its development from the 16th century onward in South Asia and Iran.
Mittal Institute India Fellows – India Office
Aditya Kumar Anand is working with S. V. Subramanian, Professor of Population Health and Geography in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His project titled “Integrated Climate-Responsive Multi-Hazard and Livelihood Resilience Assessment in the Bhilangana River Basin, Garhwal Himalayas,” examines how climate change is reshaping multi-hazard risks and livelihood vulnerability in the Bhilangana River Basin. The study analyzes long-term climate trends and extremes using downscaled CMIP6 models and maps landslides, flash floods, and cascading hazards through geospatial and machine-learning techniques.
Robert Lunkhopao Haokip is working with Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Department of History, Harvard University. His project titled, “The North-East Frontier in the Second World War: Empires and experiences at the Imperial margins, 1942-1945,” explores how global events such as the Second World War was experienced at the empire’s margin. Focusing on the British Assam-Burma borderlands, the study looks at the ways in which local societies encountered and responded to the war.
Returning Fellows
Tresa Abraham is the Raghunathan Family Fellow. Her primary research interest lies in colonial culture. Her focus has been on the use of wild animals in power negotiations in colonial India. Dr. Abraham’s current research at Harvard will be on the cultural history of taxidermy in India.
Sachin Kumar is the Mittal Family Climate Fellow. He is a recognized leader in Artificial Intelligence, who specializes in the intersection of AI technology and societal impact. Currently serving as an Assistant Professor at the Cluster Innovation Centre, University of Delhi, he is also the Executive Officer of the University of Delhi Foundation. His research focuses on leveraging AI/ML to solve urban societal challenges, specifically climate change and sustainability in urban environments.