Karthik Shankar
Karthik is a first-year PhD student from Chennai. His work broadly focuses on queer theory and environmental humanities across South Asia and the Middle East. Karthik was a Chevening scholar for the year 2020-2021 at SOAS University of London where he graduated with a master’s in comparative literature. His dissertation looked at trans corporeality in Indian Anglophone fiction. A portion of this thesis is forthcoming in Wasafiri: International Contemporary Writing. Karthik has previously worked as a writing instructor and teaching assistant with the English department at Ashoka University, Delhi. He was also part of the inaugural team that helped set up the JCB Prize for Literature, India’s richest literary award, in 2018. Karthik has also worked as an independent journalist for a variety of publications and has been the recipient of a number of awards including the Likho Award for Excellence in Media from Humsafar Trust, India’s largest queer rights organisation, and the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation’s Young Writer’s Grant.