Doctoral Student Awarded Prestigious Research Fellowship

Palashi Vaghela, a doctoral student in Information Science, has been awarded a 2021 Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) for her work on caste, gender, and computing.

Palashi is one of 60 awardees chosen from nearly a thousand applications from graduate students at 109 universities. The award will support Palashi's dissertation research, "Caste Of Computing: Everyday Practices Of Castelessness And Risks Of Dalit Subjectivity In India."

The Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), an independent, international, nonprofit organization.

The award was announced in April.