Bruce R. Pray Graduate Student Conference Grant

Bruce R Pray Grants logoThanks to the generosity of Professor Emeritus Bruce R. Pray (Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies), the Institute for South Asia Studies is able to offer the Bruce R. Pray Graduate Student Conference Grant to UC Berkeley graduate students. Grants of up to $1000 are available ONLY for presenting at the Annual South Asia Conference in Madison-Wisconsin.

Only applicants whose panels/papers have been accepted to the conference are eligible to apply.

Awardees will be reimbursed up to $1000 of their travel expenses contingent upon presenting copies of their tickets and the conference program.

Interested applicants should send the following materials to Dr. Padma Dorje Maitland at padmamaitland@berkeley.edu. Please include the phrase “Pray Conference Grant ” in the subject line.

  • An abstract of the paper (500 words or less, PDF format)
  • A print out or copy of the conference schedule showing your presentation listing (PDF format)
  • A CV (PDF format)

Deadline for submission: September 15, 2026

Decisions announced: September 20, 2026

Year Awardee
2026
  • Meher Gandhi (PhD Student, South & Southeast Asian Studies): Literature of space: A study of space–self relations in Hindi novels
  • Hana Jo (PhD Student, South & Southeast Asian Studies): Lay Buddhist Citta’s Interreligious Debates with Non-Buddhist Ascetics across Pali and Chinese Canons
  • Polina M. Timina (PhD Student, Anthropology): Territorializing friendship: the bonds of Russia and India
  • Srihari Nageswaran (PhD Student, Anthropology): From Moscow to Madras: Cold War Internationalism and Indo-Soviet Cultural and Intellectual Exchanges
  • Githmi Rabel (PhD Student, Sociology): How Women Migrant Workers from Sri Lanka Negotiate their Project of Dignity-Making
  • Akshita Todi (PhD Student, South & Southeast Asian Studies): The Making of a Marwari Past
2025
  • Uttara Chaudhuri, (English), "Tagore, Marx and Aesthetic Labor"
  • Aparajita Das, (History), "Storage on the Monsoon Coast: Tobacco Trade and Material Practices in 17th Century Western India"
  • Vardan Ratan Gupta, (South and Southeast Asian Studies), "Between the Sacred and the Political: Spaces of Ritual and Kingship in Early Medieval Kāśī"
  • Krishna Shekhawat, (History of Art), "Between Containment and Flow: The Political Ecologies of Hydro-Architecture in Jodhpur, ca. 1459–1562"
2024
  • Pronoy Chakraborty, (South & Southeast Asian Studies), "Mystic Power and the Riverine Networks: Probing the Relation of the Kaibarta Rebellion in 11th century Northern Bengal and a Caryā Song by Bhusukupa"
  • Aparajita Das, (History), “Energies in the Forest: A Close Look at Bhil Hunt in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Courtly Visions"
  • Sourav Ghosh, (History), "The Way of Water: Environmental Migration and State Formation in Early Modern India"
  • Srihari Nageswaran, (Anthropology), "Dravidianism and the Crisis of Quasi-Federalism"
  • Tausif Noor, (History of Art), "Framing Sovereignty – The 1971 Liberation War and Documentary Mode"
  • Revanth Ukkalam, (South & Southeast Asian Studies), "Hating the Muslim from the Lion-Hill: theology and communalism in an 18th century Telugu Śataka"

Topics

Funding topic page, Graduate Students topic page