DAAD visiting PhD Students


Visiting PhD students are listed in alphabetical order with their project titles and the CeMIS research group they were affiliated with.


New Passage to India 2019 – 2023

Premkumar MK (Hyderabad University)
“Mapping the Transitional Phase between History and Present. A Study on Wayanadan Pulayar”
Indian Religions

Mufsin Puthan Purayil (IIM Kolkata)
“Communitarian Ties as Strategic Economic Resource: A Study of Job Seeking and Mobility among Kerala Emigrants”
Modern Indian History

Vishal Singh Deo (Delhi University)
“Political Economy of Caste in Uttar Pradesh 1850−1980”
Modern Indian History & State and Democracy in Modern India

Praveen Verma (Delhi University)
“Law and Changing Forms of Identity Assertion in Northern India: 1900-2000s”
Indian Religions


New Passage to India 2015 – 2017

Saeed Ahmad (Delhi University)
“Daily Akhbar: Newspapers and Reading Publics, 1945-1952”
State and Democracy in Modern India

Rupali Bansode (IIT Delhi)
“Sexual Violence on Dalit Women in the Indian State of Maharashtra”
Indian Religions

Zaid al Baset (CSSSC, Kolkata)
“The Supernatural and the Muslim Everyday in Kolkata”
Society and Culture in Modern India

Himadri Chatterjee (JNU)
“Partitioned Urbanity: Refugee Politics and Planning in Kolkata”
State and Democracy in Modern India

Rohini Khandari (JNU)
“Stem Cell Research and Experimentation in India: Mapping Practice and Policy”
State and Democracy in Modern India

Koyel Lahiri (CSSSC, Kolkata)
“Politics of Organizing Urban Work: A Study of Two Sites in India's Transforming Economy”
State and Democracy in Modern India

Jadumani Mahanand (JNU, Delhi)
“Ambedkar’s Idea of Democracy: a Study of Inequality”
Indian Religions

Raoof Mir (JNU)
“Media and Religion in Contemporary Kashmir: A Case Study of Anantnag and Srinagar”
Culture and Society in India

Chittibabu Padavala (IIT Bombay, Mumbai)
“The Holocaust and the Social Sciences”
Indian Religions

Dickens Leonard Michael Raj (University of Hyderabad)
“Anti-caste Communitas in Religion and Culture: Iyothee Thass and Dalit-Subaltern emergence in early 20th Century South India”
Indian Religions

C. Chandra Sekhar (English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad)
“Interrogating Dalit Conversion in Colonial South India: Christian Missionaries and the Emergence of Egalitarian Discourse”
Indian Religions

Praskanva Sinharay (CSSSC)
“Caste in West Bengal: Popular Politics and the Making of Dalit Identity”
Indian Religions

Sk Abdul Matin (JNU)
“Community, Mobilisation and Development: The Making of a New Muslim Identity in Contemporary West Bengal (2006-2016)”
State and Democracy in Modern India

Aastha Tyagi (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai)
“Gender and Political Identities of Young Women in Urban India”
State and Democracy in Modern India


New Passage to India 2013 – 2014

Saad Ahmad (JNU)
“Islamic Televangelism in Ratnagiri”
Culture and Society in India

Rajan Pandey (JNU)
“Agrarian Change and Peasant Politics: A Case Study of Post Green Revolution Western Uttar Pradesh”
State and Democracy in Modern India

Sushmita Pati (JNU)
“Capital and Community: A Study of Select Urban Villages in South Delhi”
State and Democracy in Modern India

Mrunal Patnekar (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta)
“Hindu-Muslim Riots' in Bombay between 1920 and 1948”
Modern Indian History

Anwesha Sengupta (JNU)
“Breaking up Bengal: People, Things and Land in times of Partition”
Modern Indian History

New Passage to India 2010 – 2012
Ratnabir Guha (JNU)
“19th Century Health, Medicine, Gender and Sexuality in South Asia”
Modern Indian History

Pratyay Nath (JNU)
“Mughal Warfare, State Formation and Military Culture in North India between 1567 and 1861”
Modern Indian History

Robert Raman (Delhi University)
“The making and unmaking of the working class politics in Bombay’s Mill Districts, 1928-1980”
Modern Indian History

Vidyha Raveenranathan (Delhi University)
“The Forgotten Sectors in Colonial Economy: Caste, Labour and the City in Colonial South India with special emphasis on Madras 1800-1940”
Modern Indian History

Kaustubh Sengupta (JNU)
“Planned Spaces, Intimate Places. Ordering a City and Creating a Neighborhood in Colonial Calcutta”
Modern Indian History

Devika Sethi (JNU)
“Proscribing Ideas: Censorship in India, 1930-60”
Modern Indian History