Tsozo Hoshi

Tsozo Hoshi works as an illustrator and visual storyteller whose practice focuses on the preservation of Naga oral traditions through the lens of accessible media. By translating ancestral narratives into a sophisticated visual language, Tsozo’s work directly addresses the widening gap between oral heritage and contemporary literacy, ensuring that regional stories remain accessible to both literate and non-literate audiences.

Central to his practice is the belief that visual media can serve as a universal bridge, democratizing information where text-based documentation often falls short. By documenting indigenous folklore and cultural nuances through painterly and semi-realistic digital designs, he aims to safeguard oral histories that are at risk of being lost to time, transforming them into a permanent, visual archive for a global audience.

Building on years of experience as a professional illustrator for a UK-based publishing firm and collaborations with the Centre for Contemporary Folklore alongside features in Art India Magazine, Tsozo’s work seeks to reclaim the narrative authority of regional stories. This dedication to cultural scholarship and narrative preservation has led him to the University of Edinburgh, where he will pursue an MA in Illustration to further integrate research-based methodologies with visual practice.

Outside of work, Tsozo follows Formula 1 and enjoys the immersive world-building of strategy and RPG games. He remains dedicated to his personal illustration practice, exploring the intersection of traditional narratives and digital tools. Ultimately, he aims to strengthen the regional creative ecosystem by linking oral traditions with research and visual storytelling.

Shaurya Singh

Shaurya Singh is an urban designer and researcher from Bhopal whose work examines how rapidly growing cities produce unequal access to housing, infrastructure, and basic services for informal communities.

Since 2015, she has independently researched the long-term aftermath of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, an experience that shaped her commitment to understanding how planning systems often fail vulnerable communities while privileging others. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Urban Design from CEPT University in 2024, where her research examined dehumanising slum rehabilitation housing in Surat, riot affected settlements in Gujarat following the 2002 riots, and informal urbanisation around ecologically sensitive water bodies.

Her undergraduate thesis focused on the Bhoj Wetlands in Bhopal, examining how unchecked development along the lake edge, unauthorised construction, sewage inflow, floodplain erosion, and haphazard concrete development are impacting water quality, threatening farming livelihoods, and putting at risk the city’s primary drinking water source, on which nearly 40% of Bhopal depends.

Since then, Shaurya has worked with organisations engaged in urban planning and community development, and is currently associated with SPARC for the Roof Over Our Heads campaign. Her work engages with women waste picker communities in Delhi, researching housing precarity, toxic exposure, sanitation, water access, and climate vulnerability. She has contributed to affordable and climate resilient housing demonstrations and played a key role in developing an informal settlement resilience index tool to assess various forms of vulnerability often overlooked within formal planning systems.

Across her years of research and fieldwork, one pattern has remained constant: those most exposed to infrastructural and environmental risk are the least recognised by the institutions meant to protect them. She will now pursue a Master’s in City Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to further explore how spatial and policy tools can help address vulnerability in informal settlements and support more grounded and equitable approaches to urban planning.

Surya Raju

Surya Raju is an aspiring mathematician interested in differential geometry (local shape), topology (global shape), and mathematical physics. He is fascinated by how geometric and physical intuition can be harnessed to probe highly abstract, yet broadly applicable mathematical structures. He also has a passion for teaching mathematics and showing students the joy of mathematical discovery.

Having always taken the initiative with his education in mathematics and science, he began studying the tools to understand the general theory of relativity in high school, and became enamoured with the beautiful and powerful language of modern geometry. However, he found that there were subtler mathematical and physical considerations to be made than computational fluency, and began his foray into rigorous undergraduate mathematics. He has since completed his B.Sc. (Honours) in Mathematics and Physics at the Chennai Mathematical Institute, and has been exposed to mathematical research during the Visiting Students Research Programme at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. He is currently being hosted by the École normale supérieure, Paris for an academic internship, with the goal of understanding physically admissible geometries of spacetime using the classical theory of minimal surfaces. He has also been a teaching assistant for several undergraduate courses at CMI.

He will be pursuing the MASt in Pure Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He hopes to interact with their world-class faculty in Riemannian geometry, low-dimensional topology, and mathematical relativity to set himself up to pursue a Ph.D. In the long term, he hopes to bring the expertise he gains back to India to generate greater enthusiasm for these pillars of modern mathematics. He also hopes to gain further teaching experience and participate in local educational outreach.

Besides academics, he enjoys playing classical violin and basketball.