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Category : Fellows


Raile Rocky Ziipao: Infrastructural Deficit in Northeast India

Raile Rocky Ziipao: Infrastructural Deficit in Northeast India

We spoke with Raile Rocky Ziipao, a multidisciplinary researcher, development practitioner, and former Raghunathan Family Fellow at the Mittal Institute. He is currently tenured at the Central University of Punjab, and has recently published a book entitled “Infrastructure of Injustice: State and Politics in Manipur and Northeast India.” Raile’s research delves into the dynamics of infrastructural development in northeast India, especially in his home state of Manipur, from a socio-anthropological perspective.

A Step Forward in India’s Digital Health Ecosystem

A Step Forward in India’s Digital Health Ecosystem

On August 15, Prime Minister Modi will announce India’s National Digital Health Mission — underpinned by the Personal Health Record design that was proposed by India Digital Health Network (IDHN) collaborators at a Radcliffe Seminar in 2016. IDHN is a Harvard-wide research and policy collaborative that works with public and private sector partners in India to advance meaningful health data exchange with the intent to improve clinical care and population health.

Video: Crowdsourcing Memories of the 1947 Partition of British India

Video: Crowdsourcing Memories of the 1947 Partition of British India

“There is nothing as epochal as the cataclysmic event that was visited upon the people of South Asia when decolonization occurred and the British withdrew during the dismantling of the British empire. That forced event — that trauma — continues to shape the lives of two billion of the world’s seven billion people today,” says Professor Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School and Director of the Mittal Institute. Despite the abundant historical and political scholarship on the Partition of British India in 1947, there are still gaps in our understanding of the event — and the Mittal Institute’s research team set out to change that.

An Artist’s Journey from Nepal to Cambridge, and Back

An Artist’s Journey from Nepal to Cambridge, and Back

“The southern border of Nepal, along India, was created 150 years ago by external parties,” says Sagar Chhetri, a visual artist from Nepal and a former Visiting Artist Fellow at the Mittal Institute. When that border was created, communities were cut in two. “[In Nepal], the ruling caste tried to unite all the peoples of the country to create one single Nepali identity. But in the populous open border region, Nepalis and Indians share marital ties, cultures, languages, and histories. With the promise of federalism during the decade-long civil war in Nepal came stronger rhetoric and ideology based on ethnic identity,” he said.

Nivedita Saksena: Digitizing India’s Health Data Exchange

Nivedita Saksena: Digitizing India’s Health Data Exchange

The India Digital Health Network (IDHN) is a research and policy collaborative focused on the development of a patient-centric and provider-friendly health data exchange ecosystem in India. Recently, the IDHN team submitted comments to a Joint Committee of the India Parliament on the 2019 Personal Data Protection Bill, which aims to protect the personal data of individuals throughout India. To learn more, we spoke with Nivedita Saksena about her role as the first IDHN Policy Fellow and the accomplishments, goals, and future of IDHN in India.

Abdul Razaque Channa: Gender Representation in Pakistan’s Primary School Textbooks

Abdul Razaque Channa: Gender Representation in Pakistan’s Primary School Textbooks

How does Pakistan’s educational system influence the creation and construction of gender in society? In an upcoming talk, Gender Representation in Primary School Textbooks in Pakistan, the Mittal Institute’s Syed Babar Ali Fellow, Dr. Abdul Razaque Channa, will discuss his research on the textbooks that are taught to students between grades 1 and 5 throughout the public-school system of Sindh province. In his research, Channa is working to uncover how these textbooks contribute to the construction, inculcation, and perpetuation of gender roles in Pakistan.

Book Workshop Builds Opportunity and Community for Junior Scholars

Book Workshop Builds Opportunity and Community for Junior Scholars

Recently, the Mittal Institute hosted a book workshop with Dr. Mariam Chughtai, Babar Ali Fellow at the Mittal Institute and Associate Dean and Assistant Professor at the LUMS School of Education in Lahore, Pakistan, to curate feedback on her manuscript currently in progress. In a book workshop, a professor hosts a junior scholar and invites other senior scholars from the relevant field to come together and provide feedback on the junior scholar’s developing book manuscript.

Naveen Bharathi: Fractal Urbanization and Residential Segregation in Liberalizing India

Naveen Bharathi: Fractal Urbanization and Residential Segregation in Liberalizing India

Each year, the Mittal Institute welcomes a new Raghunathan Family Fellow to support recent PhDs whose research lies in the humanities and social sciences related to South Asia. Naveen Bharathi, the Mittal Institute’s 2019-20 Raghunathan Family Fellow, comes to Harvard with a breadth of experience as an architect, planner, and researcher of political sociology and political economy of identity in India. Most particularly, his research explores the relationship between ethnic diversity and development in contemporary urban India.