Anna Schnieder-Krüger, Dhanya Kirchhof and Reyazul Haque successfully defended their doctoral dissertations in the South Asian Studies program in July 2026. Anna’s dissertation focuses on the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi and examines the interplay of urban planning, architecture, and communal life on the university grounds. Dhanya’s research focuses on the media networks and communicative practices of people living in the Indian state of Punjab and in Germany who draw on Guru Ravidas’s teachings. Music plays a central role in this context. In his doctoral dissertation, Reyaz examines GDR newsreels (“Der Augenzeuge”) which contained a significant number of reports on India over a period of several decades. These are analyzed in depth from a film-theoretical perspective, with a focus on time, space, and speed.
The Department for South Asian Societies and Cultures (SASC) extends its warmest congratulations to the three doctoral graduates and wishes them all the best in their future academic and professional careers!
Reyazul Haque, Anna Schnieder-Krüger and Dhanya Kirchhof.
How would the interaction between students, faculty and other (non-)human beings in our Edison-Höfe in Berlin-Mitte change if the inner courtyard, with newly created seating areas and flowering plants, invited us all to linger? Using this AI-generated image of the IAAW, Anna Schnieder-Krüger illustrated to the audience during her PhD defense in July 2026 that her research on the JNU campus in Delhi also offers valuable insights for redesigning university spaces in Berlin…
What can archival research reveal about identity, belonging and the stories we tell about the world? As part of a three-month research internship at the Department of South Asian Societies and Cultures, Merlina Sessano from Buenos Aires joined Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin to work with the Navina Sundaram Archive. In this interview, Merlina reflects on unexpected connections between India, Germany and Latin America, on the joys and challenges of archival work, and the valuable lesson she learned about finding her own rhythm as a researcher.
„I learned a lot about myself and my relationship with research“.
Photo: Nadja-Christina Schneider
Q: Merlina, you came to Berlin to work here as part of a research internship on an archive dedicated to Navina Sundaram, an Indian journalist and filmmaker in Germany. How did this come about and what interested you about this archive?
Merlina: I did not know about the archive – or Navina – until I heard from the project. What immediately caught my attention was the exceptionality of her work but also the familiarity of her experience: she managed to use her unusual spot in the western media to show a picture of subalternized parts of the world; she also collected reflections on her own identity and life experience, as Indian and German, from India to Germany and back, contradictory, mixed, in both places, in neither, in between. I find her experience – in a way – very connected to Argentinian and Latinamerican experiences and realities, and her work one that we can really learn from. Overall, I found the archive to touch upon topics that do not belong to any region, and at the same time to hold special connections to my own, as it invites us to reflect on how we imagine culture, identity, belonging, others and ourselves and how we can change the fixed representations that continue reproducing colonial imaginaries. I found this experience to raise questions about my own region and its peoples‘ -and my – identity building processes and the ways that it has – or has not – been represented in media.
Q: What exactly did you do during your three-month research internship at HU?
Merlina: During these three months, I did mainly three kinds of activities involving the archive, all of which took me to different conversations, people and questions: I started an excel catalogue of the physical archive – this allowed me to get to know the collection, reflect on the process of cataloguing and also find some hidden treasures. Additionally, I attended lectures and workshops regarding archives and archiving – this was particularly interesting because I met students and scholars who were researching with the same- or other- archive materials than me -, through whom I encountered completely new and different perspectives and questions on them. Finally, I pursued my own research quest within the archive and collection lead by some of the materials to questions around feminisms and translations, regarding politics, distances and representations. The three were completely different and enriching ways to engage with – and learn about- working with archives.
Q: Was there a particular “aha” moment during this internship – and what experiences and insights from this time will you take with you for your future academic career?
Merlina: There were many “aha” moments, some of them regarding archives, some regarding the materials themselves, some regarding my own reflections and some regarding my whole internship experience. I have learned a lot. I got to explore topics and perspectives new to me, I found new questions for older topics and I reaffirmed the importance of exchange with others. But most importantly, I learned that researching has a rhythm, a pace of its own. Opportunities to dedicate exclusively to research – outside the context of a PhD scholarship – are rare where I come from and this was the first time I ever got to do research as a main activity. In this very short experience, I learned a lot about myself and my relationship with research. Maybe the most important “aha” moment – and a big lesson for my future academic career – is that I need to find this rhythm and make it my own.
Poster created by Merlina Sessano for an event organized by the Humboldt Internship Program for international research interns. For more information on the HIP program, go to: https://hic.hu-berlin.de/en/internship-program
Poster und Podcast von Nadja-Christina Schneider
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