Pritha Mukherjee (she/her) is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Art History, Rutgers-New Brunswick specializing in archaeological collections and museums in South Asia. She has an MA in Historical Studies from Nalanda University, India, and a BSc (Hons) in Chemistry from Presidency University, India. Pritha has worked as a Student Research Assistant at the Rajgir Archaeological Survey Project (RASP) and a Research & Development Associate with Immersive Trails in India. She is interested in understanding representations of heritage sites in South Asia in the light of current sociopolitical developments. Her dissertation takes the creation of the Bihar Museum as a point of departure to interrogate the processes behind production of regional cultural heritage in Bihar over the past twenty years. Pritha is also a Rutgers Presidential Fellow (2019-24) and the Graduate Student Representative for the Executive Board of the South Asian Studies Program (SASP), Rutgers-New Brunswick (2021-22).
Emma Oslé (oh-SLEIGH) is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her dissertation research centers contemporary U.S. Latinx and indigenous visual production, with special interests in motherhood/mothering, intersectional decolonial feminisms, the US-Mexico border, race, and the environmental humanities. She is currently an Adjunct Lecturer at Rutgers University in the Department of Latinx and Caribbean Studies, and has accumulated curatorial experience in several museums including the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR), and multiple smaller institutions and private collections.
Sara Varanese (she/her) is a PhD Candidate focusing on architecture, urban landscape and ecology in medieval South Asia. Sara has a background in architectural heritage and conservation from Polytechnic University in Turin (Italy), and received her Master’s in Art History and Archaeology from SOAS, London. Her current project investigates a premodern pilgrimage centre in Eastern India and reconfigures its urban structure as an extensive hydrologic landscape. Her interests also include ritual space and performativity, and the visual culture of monastic and ascetic communities and practices.