Hiba Siddiqui is a certified Psycho-oncologist pursuing her PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad and practising as a Senior Psycho-oncologist at Max Healthcare in New Delhi, India. She is interested in working with a niche focus on cancer survivorship and sexual health communication in the field of health and medical psychology in India.

Saanika Patnaik is studying history at Ashoka university and her topic of research is ‘Becoming a Political Sovereign: The English East India Company on the South Konkan Coast.’

Hiba Siddiqui

The narrative and experience of cancer is not unique to a patient or a survivor, it also lends its implications to family, caregivers, and healthcare professionals. Its confluence lies in the shared stories of loss, pain, and grief, or in moments of relief and laughter. Through years of lived experience and reflection, Hiba witnessed the relational intricacies between the person in care and the care provider. These nuances became more palpable as a practising clinician when navigating coded situations and dilemmas that arose from them. It is within this coded space that the premise of her PhD research is rooted.

Given that sexual health is often neglected due to cultural norms in India, and the lack of structured communication skills and training laboratory, Hiba’s research aims to improve understanding of experiences of sexual health communication from the perspective of cancer survivors, male partners, oncologists, and oncology nurses.

This study will pave the way for future research on barriers and facilitators of engaging in sexual health communication in cancer care in India. Furthermore, it will train doctors and nurses in communication skills, and sensitize them towards patients’ needs and gender-sensitive opportunities within Indian communities.

The Inlaks Research and Travel Grant will enable Hiba to visit the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, USA, and train as an observer in their Comskil Laboratory. The clinical exposure to disease-specific cancer care units, interactions with oncology experts, and access to seminal research publications will inimitably benefit her understanding as a researcher and a practising psycho-oncologist in India. She aims to develop a sociocultural analysis of the literature and dissertation data providing a valuable resource for cancer survivorship in India. This grant will enhance the quality, relevance, and impact of her research, enabling her to design effective, culturally sensitive interventions for patient groups and healthcare providers.

Saanika Patnaik

Saanika’s research project explores the idea of sovereignty on the early modern South Asian coast. It specially focuses on the position of the English East India Company within the eighteenth century south Konkan coast to understand what it meant to be a coastal sovereign and how one acquired this position. She looks into what made this particular iteration of Company sovereignty distinct from other regions within the Indian Ocean world, and the interlinkages between space and socio-political praxis. Hence, her research pays close attention to the regional particularities and the specific pragmatics of governance characterising the south Konkan coast in the early modern era. She analyses such specificities through a variety of themes ranging from the coastal topography and geography, and local and translocal actors and networks, to the distinct system of Company administration, and the Marathas as a political contingency. Her work focuses on the localised nature of encounters, threats, engagements and hierarchies that impacted the idea of sovereignty and the way it was enacted on the coast. 

This project stems from her harboured interest in urban landscapes and coastal societies within the broader exchanges of the Indian Ocean world. It lies at the crossroads of spatial history, Indian Ocean studies, and urban history, and primarily draws on archival records written in English, Marathi and Persian. The Inlaks Research and Travel grant will enable her to visit the UK and access the archives of the British Library, the National Maritime Museum, the UKHO, and universities like SOAS, Cambridge and Oxford. These repositories hold crucial Company records, maps, hydrographic and maritime material, and vernacular manuscripts that will allow her to get a more comprehensive understanding of Company workings on the south Konkan coast.