Grant Category: | Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program (DDRA) |
Project Title: | Landscapes of Solidarity: Food Politics and Popular Internationalism in Postcolonial India |
Field of Study: | Geography |
Home Institution: | Clarkson University, Madurai, Delhi |
Host Institution: | Birla Institute of Technology and Science-Pilani |
Grant Start Month: | February,2024 |
Duration of Grant: | Seven months |
Lavanya Nott is a PhD student in geography at UCLA. She has a master’s degree in South Asia studies from Cornell University and a bachelor’s in English literature and mathematics from Bryn Mawr College. She has worked in organizing and research in the area of labor rights in both India and the U.S., most recently, with an organization in Bengaluru on the working conditions in export-oriented manufacturing industries in South India. In the past, her research has been supported by Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships, and UCLA-administered grants.
Outside of research, Lavanya is an avid baker and cook, and enjoys playing football with a local club and spending time with her dog, Abacus.
Lavanya’s Fulbright research is exploring past and current projects on food sovereignty in postcolonial India and their entanglements with anti-imperialist internationalist currents across the Third World. Her study is particularly on how struggles around food sovereignty have transformed in response to neoliberalism, and how they relate to broader questions of political and economic sovereignty in the postcolonial world.