I undertook internship placements at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh, and the British Museum, London.
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Anthropology
Pankaja Sethi
Tribal Kotpad textiles and the methods of natural dyeing in the border zone of Orissa and Bastar
Bishnupriya Basak
Understanding the antiquity of mankind: Interpretation of past human behaviour from archaeological artefacts with special reference to stone tools
The Nehru Trust award allowed me to visit the archives and manuscript collections of the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, and Indian Collections housed in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. The ambition of my project was to better consider the beginnings of prehistoric archaeology in the Indian sub-continent with special reference to eastern India.
Srinivas Suwada
Local gods and popular culture: a study of mother goddess worship in an urban setting
I was awarded this grant while pursuing doctoral research, and will submit my dissertation in summer 2001. The grant allowed me to travel to fieldsites, to undertake photography, and to cover other costs of fieldwork and report preparation and to achieve more ambitious documentation of craft and folk traditions than I would otherwise have achieved. It also made me self-confident, and strengthened and boosted my morale. I am planning to publish articles in academic journals and have lectured to American students on these topics.
Dr Karunakar Bisoi
Palm leaf manuscripts of Orissa, a socio-cultural study
The award was very timely and the grant was utilised in visiting different manuscript repositories and libraries to collect material for the research. This prestigious award encouraged me in fulfilling my ambition which was long cherished in furthering my research activities.
Srinivas Suwada
Local gods and popular culture: a study of mother goddess worship in an urban setting
I was awarded this grant while pursuing doctoral research, and will submit my dissertation in summer 2001. The grant allowed me to travel to fieldsites, to undertake photography, and to cover other costs of fieldwork and report preparation and to achieve more ambitious documentation of craft and folk traditions than I would otherwise have achieved. It also made me self-confident, and strengthened and boosted my morale. I am planning to publish articles in academic journals and have lectured to American students on these topics.
N Athiyaman
Documentation of traditional diving for pearl and chunk in Mannar Gulf, from the Sangam period onwards;
These funds were very useful as seed money for ethnographic study in the Tamil region. As a result, Tamil University has extended its helping hand to widen the survey for the Palk Bay region also. INSA, New Delhi, also provided some contingency grants to improve the study of traditional pearl and chank fishing. Since the Trust has encouraged such a small study, I feel more confident in pursuing further ethnographic study uncovered by the scholars.
Vibha Singh Chauhan
The construction of indigenous gods and linkages with the communities of eastern Uttar Pradesh
The award of a Small Study and Research grant proved invaluable for me for reasons probably different from many others. I was not a young scholar but a university teacher in mid-career, and had developed a serious academic interest in an area that was not directly related to my formal discipline of English literature. My independent readings in sociology, anthropology and history, along with my travels in the Indian countryside had opened the fresh arena of the creation and continuation of village gods as an intergral part of cultural existence in India.
Dr K Rajan
A study of the traditional bead-making industry of Periya district of Tamil Nadu
The grant served as seed money to carry out the preliminary studies which helped to take up the major work in the selected field. For instance the feasibility study helped to get major research project funding from the Indian National Science Academy.
Soumhya Venkatesan
To study the mat and silk weaving traditions of Pattamadai village and Kanchipuram town in Tamil Nadu
I would like to thank the Trustees for their timely and generous awards. In the year following my Cambridge M Phil I returned to India and was given a second grant to conduct ethnographic research among weaving communities. This work formed a pre-PhD pilot study and I returned to Cambridge in 1996 to commence work on my PhD entitled "Crafting discourse: mat weaving in Pattamadai, South India". I was awarded the PhD in 2002.