Graduate Students

Listing: To have your name, research interests and bio added to this list, please email us at csashelp AT berkeley DOT edu with "Grad Student Bio" in your email subject line. Comments and queries welcome.

Anand, Manpreet Singh, Business (M.B.A.)
Area of Interest: Technology Sector Business Development in South Asia

Ayyagari, Shalini, Music (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Western Rajasthani folk music traditions, musical patronage, development studies, cultural tourism, classical Hindustani instrumental music

Baxter, Matt, Political Science (M.A., Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Political Theory, Tamil Nadu, Colonialism and Post-Coloniality

Blundell, David, International and Area Studies (Post-doc)
Area of Interest: Religion, Visual Anthropology and Ethnographic film, and GIS Linguistic Mapping

Bruns, Prudence, South Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Nadi Vijnana (pulse diagnosis), Ayurveda

Chowdhury, Ruprekha, South Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Gender Studies, Religion Studies and Kolkata.

Datla, Kavita, History (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Colonial Hyderabad

Desai, Manish A., Environmental Health Sciences (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: The Ecology and Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases in India

Gupta, Shilpi, Journalism (M.J.), International and Area Studies (M.A.)
Area of Interest: International Reporting, Documentary Films

Heller, Sarah Megan, Demography (M.A)
Area of Interest: Anthropology of the Himalayas, Nuptiality and Courtship, Gender, Production of Knowledge

Hingorani, Alka, History of Art
Area of Interest: Medieval Temples of North India (Ph.D.)

Mahanta, Nani, Group in Asian Studies (M.A.)
Area of Interest: Conflict Resolution, Terrorism and Non-violence

Mani, Preetha, South Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Hindi, Tamil, Translation Studies and Gender Studies

Mena, Carlos, South Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Tamil Literature

Mody, Sujata, South Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Early 20th century Hindi literature, literary historiography, literature and national identity, gender and nationalism, and language politics.

Mukherji, Anuradha, Architecture (Ph.D)
Areas of Interest: Disaster Housing Recovery and Reconstruction Issues; Development Theory, Policy and Practice; Using GIS for Disaster Mitigation

Naqvi, Tahir H. Anthropology (Ph.D.)
Areas of Interest: Pakistan, political violence, urban ethnography, Indo-Muslim history.

Neutill, Rani, Ethnic Studies (Ph.D.)
Areas of Interest: Film, History in Indian Fiction

Nijhawan, Shobna, (Ph.D. candidate)
Areas of Interest: Hindi and Urdu language as well as literature, the development of the Hindi public sphere (19th and early 20th centuries), educational policies in 20th century India, theories of gender and nationalism, and changing perceptions of disease and illness in Hindi fiction and Hindi medical periodicals (twentieth century)

Pai, Gita, South Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Pre-modern South India: Sovereignty, Temple Architecture, Tamil Literature and Representation of Women

Pal, Joyojeet, City and Regional Planning (Ph.D)
Area of Interest: Technology infrastructure in developing regions, user interface and design of devices for low-literacy populations, ethnography and relevance of technology.

Pandian, Anand, Anthropology (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Cultural Politics of Nature

Paramasivan, Vasudha, South Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Pre-modern Hindi and Tamil Language and Literature

Patel, Deven, South Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Sanskrit Language and Literature

Peiris, Anoma, Architecture (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: 19th Century Colonial Straits Settlements

Raddock, Robert, South Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Upanishads and Pali Buddhism

Radhakrishnan, Smitha, Sociology (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Gender and Socio-political institutions

Saha, Krishanu, Chemical Engineering (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Science and Technology Policy in India

Sathaye, Adheesh, South Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Sanskrit Literature and South Asian Folkloristics

Satyal, Amita, History (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Trade in the Mughal Period

Schlossberg, Scott, South and Southeast Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Politics, Literary and Cultural Studies in Colonial and Post-colonial Indonesia and North India

Shah, Manisha, Resource Economics (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Economic Development and Health, Labor Issues for Commercial Sex Workers in India

Shah, Samir A., South Asian Studies (M.A.)
Area of Interest: History of Religion, Community Interaction in Contemporary Northwest India

Shingavi, Snehal, English (Ph.D.)
Areas of Interest: South Asian literature in English, Hindi and Urdu Literature of the 20th century, Gandhi, South Asian Literature in the Diaspora and in Translation, Politics of Anti-Colonialism and Nationalism, Globalization, Visual Art of the 20th century, British and American Modernism

Singh, Navjot, South Asian Studies (M.A.)
Area of Interest: Issues of Second Generation South Asian Identity in Relation to Bhangra's Rising Popularity in the Diaspora; Hindi, Punjabi; West African Dance

Slouber, Michael, South and Southeast Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Classical Sanskrit literature, philosophy, and religious polemics.

Steig, Jordyn, Anthropology (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Social and Labour Relations of Hindi Film Production

Stein, Deborah, Art History, (Ph.D)
Area of Interest: Rajasthani temples

Takhar, Jennifer, French (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: 20th Century Literature of the Mascareigne Islands

Tompkins, Christopher, South Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Comparative study of Yoga and conceptions of Yoga philosophy

Towghi, Fouzieyha, Medical Anthropology (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Development Policy Discourse about and Community Practices of "Traditional" Medicines for Reproductive Health Care in Balochistan, Pakistan

Verma, Nita, History (Ph.D)
Area of Interest: Hindu widows and the colonial legal system in the late 19th century

Wallis, Christopher D., South Asian Studies (Ph.D.)
Area of Interest: Ancient and Medieval Hindu Religious Philosophy, Kashmiri Tantric Shaivism

Manpreet Singh Anand
I am a graduate student and am pursuing an MBA at the Haas School of Business and an MA in International and Area Studies. My general interest is in international development and in dealing with various South Asia issues. I have a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. I have previously worked as a consultant in US, UK, Netherlands, Spain, and India.

Shalini Ayyagari
I am in the Ethnomusicology doctoral program in the Music Department, working closely with Bonnie Wade. My research focuses on folk musical practices in North India. In my dissertation project, I am examinging the sustainability of Western Rajasthani musical ecologies through the lens of both development and cultural tourism studies, as hereditary musicians rearticulate socail and economic relationships of traditional patronage in the face of pressures of modernization.

David Blundell
I am interested in research and teaching on Asian studies in the humanities on religion, visual anthropology and ethnographic film, life account, research methodologies, aesthetics, and GIS linguistic mapping. Taking an interdisciplinary approach for studies on human values and beliefs in various environmental contexts, whether rural or industrial, is the guiding thread for my research. My continuing research is based on my Ph.D. dissertation to record life histories in the context of a traditional belief system (i.e., Sinhalese in Buddhist society) and portray the life as communicated utilizing written and visual media. I am currently affiliated with IAS working on the languages of Southern Asia, Indian Ocean and relations to the Pacific. My recent projects include films on (1) the Revival if Buddhism in India and (2) the Vedda: A Sri Lanka Community.

Manish A. Desai I am a doctoral student in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences. My interests focus on the dynamic relationships between the ecology and epidemiology of infectious diseases in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. My dissertation addresses the spatial dynamics of malaria transmission, integrating field work, geographic information systems, and mathematical modeling to inform the design of interventions. I also work on issues in global change and public health, indoor air pollution, and the political ecology of inequity and infection.

Shilpi Gupta
I am a student in the Graduate School of Journalism with an emphasis in Documentary Filmmaking. I may be pursuing a second degree in International and Area Studies with a focus on regions of ethnic conflict. I spent the past summer shooting in Kashmir for a documentary about women and children. I graduated with a B.A. in International Relations from Brown University. My thesis analyzed changes in Chinese policy towards their ethnic minorities in lieu of the economic developmental potential of ethnic tourism.
To see a photo essay I shot on bonded laborers in Chennai, India, please click
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/asiaproject/Gupta.html
For more information, you can visit my resume on the J-School's web-site:
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/students/gupta.html

Alka Hingorani
I am a graduate student in the Department of History of Art, working with Dr. Joanna Williams. I studied 19th century paintings of women rulers for my Master's thesis, and am presently working on the contemporary use of medieval temples in North India.

Nani Mahanta
I am doing my Master's in Asian Studies. I am here as Rotary World Peace scholar mostly focusing on Conflict Resolution, Terrorism and Non-violence. I am from the Assam in North East India, a region, which shares about 5000km international border with China, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Bangladesh has been witnessing serious armed conflict with the Indian state since the attainment of India's independence in 1947. I am here to look for theoretical and empirical tools that will give insight to work for a peaceful society in the North Eastern part of India. Professionally, I have been a lecturer in the department of Political Science, Gauhati University for the last three years. I also look forward to develop a Conflict Resolution course in my University. I completed my Master's degree from Jawaharlal Nehru Univ., New Delhi and am currently doing doctoral research on the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA).

Preetha Mani
I am a M.A./ Ph.D. student in South and Southeast Asian Studies. My interests are in Hindi, Tamil, translation studies, and gender studies. I received a B.A. in English and Philosophy from Tufts University. Prior to coming to Berkeley, I interned at Katha, an NGO in New Delhi, working with translators who were promoting movements between regional Indian languages and English through both theoretical and grass-roots work. I also spent a year teaching fourth grade. I would like to focus on contemporary women's literature in India and look at the interconnections between Hindi, Tamil, and English.

Sujata Mody
I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies with an emphasis in modern Hindi. My dissertation research focuses on the role of the prominent Hindi literary journal Sarasvati (1900-82) as well as other periodicals instrumental in the construction of both a modern Hindi canon and a modern Indian national identity. I have taught Hindi and modern South Asian literature courses as a graduate student at UC Berkeley. I received a B.A. in English and Anthropology from Rice University in 1997 and an M.A. from UC Berkeley in South and Southeast Asian Studies (Hindi) in 2000.

Anuradha Mukherji
I am a doctoral student at the Department of Architecture with a focus on Theory and Policy in Post-Disaster Development and Housing Recovery Practices. My research examines the relationship among global interventions, state programs and socio-economic goals of a community, through the lens of post-earthquake housing recovery program in Kutch, India. My previous degrees, in Architecture, are from the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad, India and Texas A&M University.

Rani Neutill
I am a third year Ph.D. student in the department of Ethnic Studies, doing a designated emphasis in film. My interest is in how the Indian English novel writes certain historical events (the Emergency, the Partition), the import of telling a story within national and political turmoil, and in turn how American critics read these events and novels. Similarly I am interested in how the advent of Satyajit Ray's career was at the crossroads of the Partition and yet American critical response to his work fails to historicize it in any way alternately praising him for his mastery of universalism and humanism.

Shobna Nijhawan
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies with a designated emphasis in women, gender, and sexuality. My advisors are Professors Vasudha Dalmia, Raka Ray, Barbara Metcalf and Colleen Lye. My dissertation titled "Public Reasoning as Moral Duty. Hindi Women's Journals and Nationalist Discourse (1910-1930)" examines the trajectory of Hindi women's journals in the early years of their existence. I have completed my research at Hindi archives in India and am about to submit the dissertation thesis. I completed my M.A. at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg (Germany) with a major in modern Hindi literature as well as Sanskrit/Religious Studies and Pedagogy as minors.

Joyojeet Pal
I am in the MIMS program at the School of Information Management and Systems. My work has components of technology, policy, education and economics - though my core research is in the social aspects of the digital divide created by the increase in technology and telecommunications access, at rates faster than basic infrastructure development in core sectors, in India. I am also interested in the investment and contribution patterns of expatriates into India, I currently work with Dr. Annalee Saxenian.

Anand Pandian
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology, working closely with Donald Moore, Lawrence Cohen, Paul Rabinow and Gene Irschick. I am interested in the cultural politics of nature, the arts of the self, and the postcolonial condition. My dissertation will explore the relationship between the cultivation of the soil and the cultivation of the heart in contemporary South India. I have just completed eighteen months of field research in Tamil Nadu, focusing on colonial and postcolonial engagements with the "criminality" of the Kallars of Madura. I am coediting a volume on Race, Nature and the Politics of Difference, forthcoming from Duke University Press.

Vasudha Paramasivan
I am a graduate student with an interest in the pre-modern literatures of Hindi and Tamil. I graduated with a Bachelors degree in Economics and Asian Studies from Mount Holyoke College. I love reading the detective fiction of Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie.

Deven Patel
I am in the doctoral program at the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies. My interests are in Sanskrit language, literature, and poetics; literary theory; traditions of reception, commentary, and pedagogy regarding literary and philosophical texts in South Asia.

Anoma Peiris
I am a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Architecture. My research is on convict labor in the 19th century Colonial Straits Settlements; more specifically on Indian and Ceylonese transportees used in the construction industry. My previous degrees, in Architecture, are from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I am currently in my final year.

Robert Raddock
I am a Ph.D. student in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies (Sanskrit emphasis). My proposed dissertation research includes an examination of the Brihadaranyaka Upanisad's reception history and textual criticism. I also study Pali, Hindi and Persian. I completed my M.A. in South and Southeast Asian Studies (Sanskrit) under the supervision of Professor Robert Goldman, and have a B.A. in Philosophy (Honors) from the University of Virginia. I have both academic and traditional yeshiva training in the Jewish textual tradition and plan eventually to do research in comparative religion and philosophy. Prior to my arrival at UC Berkeley, I studied Sankrit at the Freie Universitaet in
Berlin, Germany. Prior to that, I studied Sanskrit under Professors Karen Lang and Robert Hueckstedt at the University of Virginia.

Smitha Radhakrishnan
I am in the Ph.D. program in Sociology, my main areas of interest are gender and socio-political institutions, especially nation-building, nationalist projects and political identity in India. I am also interested in the Indian diaspora in South Africa, in feminist critiques of the "Kerala model", and in Rajasthan.

Adheesh Sathaye
I am a doctoral candidate in South and South East Asian Studies (SSEAS), with emphases on Sanskrit literature and South Asian folkloristics--and so my primary advisors are Robert Goldman (SSEAS) and Alan Dundes (Anthropology). Specifically, my dissertation work centers on the intertextuality of epic and puranic narratives of the sage Visvamitra as they are performed in the contemporary Marathi devotional performance tradition known as kirtan. I received a B.A. in Mathematics in 1994 from the University of Chicago, and an M.A. in Sanskrit here at U.C. Berkeley in 1997.

Amita Satyal
I joined my PhD studies in the history department in the Fall of 1999. Currently, I am working towards the history of overland trade of Mughal India. I already hold my M.A. and M.Phil degrees in History from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Poetry, Wodehouse, music, and the mountains, for one of those inspirations!

Manisha Shah
I am a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics. I am interested in Economic Development and Health; Labor markets and issues of risk for Commercial sex workers in India and Mexico. I have worked in both countries in the areas of agriculture (Green Revolution related research), health, and economic development.

Snehal Shingavi
My dissertation is about Indian writers in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s (Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, Ahmed Ali, Bhabhani Bhattacharya, GV Desani) who were in the orbit of British Modernism, Gandhian nationalism, and Marxist, anti-fascist internationalism.

Michael J. Slouber
My language of emphasis is Sanskrit, which I study under Professor Robert P. Goldman. My studies focus mainly on the Epic, Puranic, and Dramatic genres, and I analyze issues of gender, economic, and religious difference portrayed therein. I am also interested in the polemics which developed between mainstream "Brahmanic Hinduism" and other native traditions. My email address mjsl@berkeley.edu and my personal website is http://web.mac.com/mjslouber/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html.