Umaima Miraj, a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology, has been awarded both the Diljit and Gulshan Juneja Award for South Asian Studies and India’s 50th Anniversary Graduate Prize by the Centre for South Asian Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.
These awards recognize outstanding graduate research in the field of South Asian Studies, with a focus on India. Umaima’s dissertation examines how the intersection of the First World War and the return of the anti-colonial Ghadar Party to India shaped the lives of women and the colonized family in early 20th-century colonial Punjab.
Her research explores how the colonial state deepened its intervention into domestic life—mobilizing families for the war effort, implementing social provisions, and punishing dissent. Her project is the first systematic study to center women’s labor and dispossession in colonial Punjab as key elements of this broader historical moment.
Umaima’s work has previously been recognized by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Muriel D. Bissell Travel Award. Her research has appeared in Political Power and Social Theory and the Journal of World-Systems Research.