Dr. Bincy Mariya N (alumna 2024 UCSIA Summer School) has been awarded the Junior Fellowship by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. This national honour supports outstanding young scholars and artists conducting in-depth research into India’s cultural heritage; Dr. Mariya N secured the fellowship in the Sociology of Culture category. It will support her research on Subaltern Epistemologies, exploring marginalized knowledge systems and narratives often absent from mainstream academic discussions.
This is the second recognition this year for Dr. Mariya N’s research on the epistemologies of the most oppressed. In February 2026, her paper, “From Agrestic Slaves to Untouchable Gods: Remembering the Repressed History of Caste Slavery and the Resistance of Pulayas in Kerala through Ritualistic Folk Art,” received a Bluestone Rising Scholar Honourable Mention from J-CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion, based at the Heller School, Brandeis University (USA).