2023-2024 Mellon Liaison Fellows

Mariam Parvez Sheikh is a PhD candidate at the College of Education, UMass. Her current research focuses on how young students in Pakistan’s higher education system produce alternative knowledge as they articulate links between their struggles within the university and movements such as feminism, climate justice and anti-capitalism.  Mariam’s work examines how students expose gender, ethnic and class inequities through their struggle for social justice. She holds a master’s degree in Education and International Development from University College London (UCL), United Kingdom and a BSc. Hons. in Economics and Political Science from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).

Meenakshi Nair is a PhD student in English at UMass. She holds a master’s degree in Comparative Literature from SOAS, University of London, a BA in English and a diploma in Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding from the Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi.  She is interested in South Asian literature and postcolonial studies, with specific interests in cities and mobility, and multilingualism and literary translation. The languages she works with are English, Hindi and Urdu, and some Malayalam. Meenakshi formerly worked with Women in Security Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP, Delhi). She is a trained Bharatanatyam dancer and has poetry and short fiction published in The Alipore Post, VAYAVYA, and elsewhere.