Scholars 2022: Arnav Sethi, Ayushi Jain, Khushboo and Lalchhanhimi Bungsut
We’re delighted to announce the 2022 Inlaks Scholars, Arnav Sethi, Ayushi Jain, Khushboo, Lalchhanhimi Bungsut, Mustafa Shahid, Pooja Chaudhuri, Pushkar Mohile, Radhani Jagadish Kumar, Shraddha More, Sohini Dudhat, Suhaib Yatoo and Unnati Ghia.
This year’s scholars are from a variety of disciplines ranging from physics, biodiversity, art, law, economics and more. Over the month of June will be presenting our 12 scholars in a 3 part series via the blog.
This week we have Arnav Sethi, Ayushi Jain, Khushboo Ajeet Kumar and Lalchhanhimi Bungsut. Arnav is pursuing a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Ayushi will be joining Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy at the University of Miami. Khushboo will pursuing her master's in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London and Lalchhanhimi will also be pursuing a Master’s in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
Arnav Sethi
In March 2022, Arnav Sethi was offered admission to the PhD program in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Prior to this, he completed his M.Phil. degree in Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics and an M.A. in Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He secured the highest score during his M.Phil. coursework for his dissertation titled “Sensorily Speaking: Music and Mental Health as Cultural and Clinical Concern”.
His doctoral project, situated within the anthropology of medicine and psychiatry, focuses on psychiatry’s nosology and symptomatology of ‘psychotic disorders.’ He wishes to explore music as a ‘non-verbal’ mode of communication that may enable psychiatrists and ethnographers to access the experiences, emotions, desires and intentions of psychotic patients, who are characterised through diminished emotional expressivity and inability to construct coherent accounts of a remembered self. Through his ethnography of psychiatric music therapy practice in London, he hopes to contribute to debates about neurobiological causation, psychopharmaceutical treatment, and conflating verbal expression with emotional experience.
He believes that the prospect of decolonising anthropology is incomplete if people, like himself, from the Global South, are unable to make the Global North their object of enquiry. The scholarship will thus benefit him enormously to undertake such a challenging but hopefully trailblazing project, which will ideally lead to an academic career in Medical Anthropology.
In 2019, he was awarded the University Grants Commission’s Junior Research Fellowship (JRF). He has passed the National Eligibility Test (NET) for Assistant Professors making him eligible to teach in any public university in India. Apart from his academic and research endeavours, he is also a trained Hindustani Indian classical vocalist.
Ayushi Jain
Ayushi Jain grew up in the famous tourist town of Agra in Uttar Pradesh where the exposure to the field of wildlife and conservation was limited. It was during her bachelor’s that she developed an understanding of the conservation problems faced by Indian wildlife, particularly, the often-overlooked reptiles. Before continuing her studies, she decide to take a gap year to volunteer in ongoing projects to develop a better understanding of the challenges faced in the conservation of reptiles. During her internships and volunteering, she developed a strong interest in freshwater turtles. She decided to pursue her master’s in Ecology and Environmental Sciences from Pondicherry University in 2017. During her course, she was selected as an EDGE Fellow by the Zoological Society of London and National Geographic PhotoArk to initiate an interdisciplinary study on the Critically Endangered, Cantor’s Giant softshell turtle in Kerala. Over the last three years, she has built a strong monitoring system and alert network with the local community members to record the sightings and threats to the species in Kerala. She is currently supported by The Habitats Trust to continue working with the State Forest department, local communities, and nature-enthusiasts to make an effective and long-term community-led monitoring network to protect the species and its habitat in Kerala. During her work, she realized the lack of strong and inclusive policies and management strategies that limit the effects of conservation of softshell turtles in India.
In August 2022, she will be joining the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy at the University of Miami. Through her doctoral research, she plans to work in collaboration with multiple stakeholders including NGOs, governmental organizations, policy makers, and local communities to find solutions and work towards the long-term and sustainable management of at-risk populations of softshell turtles and their habitats globally.
Khushboo
Khushboo is a visual artist and an art educator. She has received her Bachelors in Painting from Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in 2020. The undergraduate study at the Department of Painting was deeply enriching and encouraging, exposing her to various dynamics of art making and responsibilities of an artist.
She was born in Pakistan and migrated to India with her family in her early teens. Living as an immigrant in India has had a huge impact on the way she views the subjects of global mobility & displacement and that sensitivity gets translated into her artworks.
Currently she is researching counter-mapping and alternative archiving, the idea that she had started to explore at an artist residency at Space Studio Baroda earlier this year.
In addition to making art, she is passionate about teaching and has been associated with various organisations as an educator and art facilitator.
In her free time she enjoys watching standup comedy and reading nonfiction & historical stories.
Khushboo will begin her master's in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, this September, to further her visual art practice in contemporary Art.
Lalchhanhimi ‘Chhani’ Bungsut
Lalchhanhimi ‘Chhani’ Bungsut is an aspiring writer and anthropologist from Aizawl, Mizoram. She completed her undergraduate degree in Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka University in 2021, where she was inspired to learn more about the region - North East India - and the state she came from. With a keen interest in food traditions, borderland societies, and minority communities within the North East, she hopes to use her discipline as a way to learn and write stories from the region. Although she aspires to contribute to academia as a researcher and eventually an educator, she hopes to primarily use her research to serve public audiences.
Chhani currently works as a content writer for the Centre for Pastoralism and as the Lead Editor of Pastoral Times, a quarterly publication on pastoralism in India and beyond. She is a recipient of The Zubaan-Sasakawa Peace Foundation Grants for Young Researchers from the Northeast (2021-22), and has also contributed a chapter to an upcoming anthology on “Food Stories from North East India.” These various projects have led her to intimate conversations with people from and living in Mizoram which has only further inspired her to learn from the different experiences of people living in the state and the broader North East region.
In the fall, Chhani will be pursuing a Master’s in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. She hopes the rigorous theoretical and empirical training at Oxford will push her to become a more perceptive and empathetic researcher, writer, and storyteller. Beyond academics, she enjoys long walks around her tree-lined neighbourhood, cooking for friends and family, and hanging out with her cats, but nothing makes her happier than her mom’s rawtuai bai (a Mizo dish made from bamboo shoot).
