The M. Estellie Smith Dissertation Award is rewarded by the Society of Economic Anthropology (SEA), US and provides graduate student awardees grants specifically to supplement dissertation fieldwork expenses. Kanikka Sersia was provided a grant of $2000 to supplement her PhD dissertation fieldwork expenses in Bengaluru, India. 

Kanikka Sersia's PhD thesis titled, "The Making of Algorithmic Labour in the Platform Economy," explores the changes in the contemporary modes of employment relationship due to the algorithmic management of work — i.e. Algorithms having the ability to allocate, track, manage, and remunerate the platform workforce. Through an ethnographic study in a platform company building a mobility app in Bengaluru’s tech milieu in India, her doctoral research studies sociocultural dynamics that inform the logic of these algorithmic systems. 

The M. Estellie Smith Dissertation Award also comes with a supplementary travel grant of $500 giving Kanikka Sersia  the opportunity to present her research work at the SEA spring conference during the year following.