Miss Zehra Mahdi, an alumna of Faculty of Architecture & Ekistics, Jamia Millia Islamia(JMI) has been awarded Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowship by United States-India Educational Foundation starting from September 1, 2024 to May 31, 2025. During the Fellowship period she will do her research work at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA.
Zehra did her Bachelors in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture & Ekistics, JMI. She is currently a Ph.D candidate at the Department of Architecture and Regional Planning, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal. Befor this she completed her Masters in City Planning also from IIT Kharagpur, West Bengal.
Currently, she is a Senior Research Fellow at IIT and her doctoral research focuses on neighborhood change in informal settlements that are predominantly inhabited by the Muslim community and influenced by the presence of anchor institutions. She employs visual geography along with oral research traditions to examine internal heterogeneity, particularly through the built environment, and capture residents’ perceptions and experiences.
During her stay at Rutgers, she will be exploring the dynamics of infrastructure provision, informal institutions and legitimacy in informal settlements.
Notably, Zehra Mahdi is one of the 24 Indian research scholars selected this year for Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship who will represent various disciplines in the United States.
She is the eldest daughter of Ghizal Mahdi and Razia Zaidi and the sister of Zainab and Amaan Mahdi. Her family hails from Nehtaur, a town in District Bijnor of Uttar Pradesh.
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