Meenakshi Nair Ambujam, a third year Anthropology and Sociology PhD candidate, was recently awarded the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant by the Wenner-Gren Foundation (2019).  Dissertation Fieldwork Grants are awarded to support and aid doctoral research, with the aim of furthering contributions to anthropological theory and debates.

Meenakshi’s project, entitled 'Landless with my Title-deed: Rethinking Restitution in Adivasi Life, Telangana' (India), examines how conditions of landlessness persist among adivasi, or tribal communities, despite participating in programmes of restitution. Focusing on documentary artefacts— particularly title-deeds— her research explores how practices of restitution may sustain experiences of landlessness, thus producing a disconnect between the ownership and possession of lands. Following various actors, her research traces how this may affect strategies of claim-making employed by adivasis and their participation in state-sponsored policies of restitution. Through 13 months of archival and ethnographic research in Telangana (India), her research proposes to refine and advance theoretical conceptualisations of dispossession and landlessness.