Fellowship News

In this edition of our Alumni Spotlight we spoke with Dr. Lakshmi Priya, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). She hails from the state of Kerala, India, and is a medical doctor by training.

Aditya K. Anand is a postdoctoral scholar whose work examines how climate change is reshaping multi-hazard risks and livelihood vulnerability in the Bhilangana River Basin

Robert Lunkhopao Haokip is a postdoctoral scholar whose work explores how global events such as the Second World War was experienced at the empire’s margin.

The Mittal Institute hosted a seminar titled “Rethinking Water Crisis, Narrative Designs, and Strategies of Resilience,” marking the end-of-fellowship seminar of Dr. Nobonita Rakshit, India Fellow at the Mittal Institute. The session was chaired by her mentor, Professor Doris Sommer, Ira and Jewel Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

The Mittal Institute is pleased to welcome Fatima Fayyaz, who joins us this spring semester as the Syed Babar Ali Fellow. Fatima is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Creative Arts at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). Her research focuses on Persian mystical and epic literature across Iran and the broader Persianate world, including Central Asia, Afghanistan, and South Asia. During her fellowship at the Mittal Institute, Fatima will undertake a comparative study of āshūrā poetry in Urdu and Persian, tracing its development from the 16th century onward in South Asia and Iran. We spoke with Fatima to learn more about her research and the focus of her fellowship.

The Mittal Institute’s Cambridge and New Delhi offices foster South Asian scholarship by hosting Fellows, Visiting Artist Fellows, and Graduate Student Associates. This spring 2026 we welcome three new researchers and two returning scholars.

Tresa Abraham, a cultural historian of colonial South Asia with a foundation in literary studies, is the Mittal Institute’s newest Raghunathan Family Fellow. Tresa’s research focus is on the use of wild animals in power negotiations in colonial India. Trained in English literary studies, she approaches the colonial past with a literary lens, weaving together histories of animals, humans, and the empire. We spoke with Tresa about her research, and what she hopes to focus on during her fellowship at Harvard.

The Mittal Institute concludes its fall event lineup with “Colonial Surveillance in Asia,” a December 19 seminar that will explore the persistence and evolution of colonial surveillance in Asia. We spoke with P. Arun, Mittal Institute India Fellow, who previewed the conference and gave some insights into colonial surveillance practices in South Asia.

Tresa Abraham, a cultural historian of colonial South Asia with a foundation in literary studies, is the Mittal Institute’s newest Raghunathan Family Fellow. Tresa’s research focus is on the use of wild animals in power negotiations in colonial India. Trained in English literary studies, she approaches the colonial past with a literary lens, weaving together histories of animals, humans, and the empire. We spoke with Tresa about her research, and what she hopes to focus on during her fellowship at Harvard.

Two India Fellows, Rinan and Nobonita, at the Mittal Institute, explore water through the lenses of governance, gender, and narrative has opened new ways of understanding this crisis. Instead of starting with scarcity as a number, their works ask us to see water as lived experience: shaped by boundaries, by politics, and by stories.