Coromandel Trade
The Visiting Fellowship gave me the opportunity to visit the museums and archives in the UK, including the Victoria and Albert Museum. The award also enabled me to gain more professional expertise and to enrich my knowledge of museology. I prepared a monograph about my experience in the UK and presented research papers to history fora on the Indian objects in the Coromandel- English trade.
A study of the culture of colonial cities
After a general introduction to the South Asian collections at the V&A, I mainly devoted my time in the UK to refer to both printed and unprinted documents relating to my study mainly at the British Library and partly in other places like School of Oriental and African Studies in London and the Centre for South Asian Studies at Cambridge University.
A cultural resource centred sustainable development model for the region of Ladakh
This research visit was sought in order to obtain materials to contribute to my PhD dissertation. During the period of the award it was possible to access a number of important sources of information pertaining to the Ladakh region, the most significant among these being the Album of Pictorial Maps of the area know as the "Wise Album' as well as the Schlagintweit survey expedition accounts. At present (2005) I am writing a paper based on the "Wise Maps" which will become a chapter in my PhD.
Malabar coast: Trade systems in the early historic period
The proposed programme was mainly intended to collect literature on Indo-Roman trade, and to interact with experts in the UK and Europe in the field of early historic Indian ocean trade, to gain knowledge of the imported ceramics of the Roman period and Gulf region, and to get expertise in the newly emerging field of geo-archaeology. The research was carried out at the Centre of South East Asian Studies, the School of Oriental and African Studies, and various other institutions in the UK.
