To study the mat and silk weaving traditions of Pattamadai village and Kanchipuram town in Tamil Nadu
I would like to thank the Trustees for their timely and generous awards. In the year following my Cambridge M Phil I returned to India and was given a second grant to conduct ethnographic research among weaving communities. This work formed a pre-PhD pilot study and I returned to Cambridge in 1996 to commence work on my PhD entitled "Crafting discourse: mat weaving in Pattamadai, South India". I was awarded the PhD in 2002.
The construction of indigenous gods and linkages with the communities of eastern Uttar Pradesh
The award of a Small Study and Research grant proved invaluable for me for reasons probably different from many others. I was not a young scholar but a university teacher in mid-career, and had developed a serious academic interest in an area that was not directly related to my formal discipline of English literature. My independent readings in sociology, anthropology and history, along with my travels in the Indian countryside had opened the fresh arena of the creation and continuation of village gods as an intergral part of cultural existence in India.
Comparative study of museum display and its interpretation by visitors
This award was very useful in the development of Chennai district museums. I had the chance to see some important museums in India and by seeing the display arrangements and interpretation techniques my knowledge was increased. I had the chance to apply this knowledge in newly opened museums.
The process and results of the commercialisation of Warli tribal Painting
I would like to thank the Trustees for their timely and generous awards. The first award allowed me to conduct research among the Warli tribe in Maharashtra and to write up the results of this research for my MA dissertation at the National Museum Institute in Delhi. After my MA and spurred on by my work on the Warlis I moved to Cambridge (UK) in 1994 to do an M Phil in Social Anthropology.The M Phil was funded by a Cambridge ODASS award. I subsequently took a PhD on matweaving in South India at the University of Cambridge and now teach at the University of Manchester.
