Ashwani Sharma granted a Visiting Scholar position at Yale University
We are glad to share that Mr. Ashwani Sharma, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Anthropology, South Asia Institute, has been awarded a Visiting Scholar position at Yale University, where he will conduct his full-time research under the supervision of Dr. Jane Lynch in the Department of Anthropology. This is a rare and prestigious opportunity. Mr. Sharma will spend one year at Yale, with the possibility of extending his stay for another year.
Research Project
Resilience in Motion: Landscape, Mobility, and Healing Practices among the Kalbeliya Nomads of the Thar Desert. This doctoral research investigates the interconnections between environmental transformation, mobility, and indigenous healing among the Kalbeliya nomads of Rajasthan’s Thar Desert. In the face of desertification, climate stress, and increasing socio-political marginalization, the Kalbeliya communities continue to practice mobile lifestyles and deploy indigenous healing practices. Despite being highly adaptive, Kalbeliya healing traditions remain excluded from formal health and environmental planning frameworks, leading to a dual burden of invisibility and dispossession.
The research addresses this critical gap by bringing indigenous health ecologies into the domain of resilience studies and political ecology, challenging dominant frameworks of adaptation and development. Guided by theories from Medical Anthropology and Political Ecology, the project explores how healing practices, ecological knowledge, and ritual mobility work together to foster adaptation and resilience in the face of socio-environmental change.
Mr. Sharma expresses his sincere gratitude to Prof. William Sax, Dr. Martin Giesselmann, Prof. Ute Hüsken, Prof. Kama Maclean, Prof. Annette Hornbacher and Prof. Hans Harder for their continuous guidance and support.
