Inlaks Research and Travel Grantees 2021: Neilcherry Shivram Abhilasha and Sivaranjini J
Neilcherry Shivram Abhilasha and Sivaranjini J are the Inlaks Research and Travel Grantees for 2021.
Abhilasha is pursuing a PhD at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. Her thesis is entitled Troubled Histories Epidemics in Assam. 1860-1950.
Sivaranjini J is a PhD student at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Her research is entitled Hybrid Cinema: Rethinking Representations of Real.
Neilcherry Shivram Abhilasha
Although epidemics took a massive toll on colonial Assam’s population and it still features prominently in the Assamese public memory, we know very little about how diseases shaped the colonial history of Assam. Neilcherry Shivram Abhilasha’s thesis explores epidemics as a lens to revisit the social history of colonial Assam. The research examines the ways in which germs and vectors, medical research, and public health were entangled with provincial politics, agrarian issues, and plantation capital. Her thesis will contribute to the South Asian historiography on diseases by foregrounding how ‘local’ specificities of a resource frontier region––agrarian expansion, plantation capital, and natural resource management––shaped the experiences of and responses to epidemics.
Abhilasha has an M.A. in Development from Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, where she developed an abiding interest in health and livelihood issues. After her M.A., she worked in a non-profit organization that empowers and broadens livelihood choices for women in rural Madhya Pradesh.
Sivaranjini J
Sivaranjini is an independent filmmaker and research scholar. She is currently pursuing her PhD in film studies from the IDC School of Design, IIT Bombay.
She has completed her Masters from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, in Film and Video Communication. At present, she occasionally teaches at NID as visiting faculty.
Her short films, Kalyani (2014) and Ritham (2017), have been selected and screened at many national and international film festivals. She has also participated in multiple film and video projects, independent and organizational, in a variety of capacities, such as director, cinematographer, editor and scriptwriter.
Her practice-based research is in the area of Hybrid cinema- cinematic narratives in the interstices between fiction and non-fiction. Her research interests are in film phenomenology and cinematic realism.
