Siddharth's story

Siddharth Pandey is a researcher, writer and artist from Shimla, in North India and is currently based in Delhi.

Siddharth is an interdisciplinary scholar and practitioner; he has a PhD in English Literature and Materiality Studies from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar and an International Scholar from 2012-2013 and 2014-2019. In 2019, he held fellowships in global history and art history at the Ludwig Maximilian University, Germany, and Yale University, USA, respectively. As a landscape photographer, he has had various curated solos in India and the UK, with commissions and invitations from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Oriental Museum in Durham. He has written on a variety of topics for The Pioneer, The Indian Express, and Scroll.in among academic journals and anthologies, and is currently engaged with book projects on two histories of Shimla and a monograph on craft and fantasy literature.

CWIT enabled me to, first and foremost, realise my dream of availing the wonderful research culture of the UK for an extended period, long before I had joined Cambridge for higher studies. My fascination with colonial cultures of the Himalayan hill stations could not have fructified into sustained research had I not been able to access the archives at the British Library, made possible entirely due to a CWIT grant. With such access came the added privileges of knowing a new place and its people.

Siddharth says that this was a life-changing experience for him due to the experts that he has encountered and finding sources that were vital for his work. My experience also led to some long-lasting friendships, not least my relationship with the previous CWIT Secretary Richard Alford. I hope that CWIT will continue its grants programmes “particularly at a time when the humanities and social sciences are facing a major crisis the world over”.

You can follow Siddarth’s photographic journey here and read his article in the Indian Express as well as the following all featured in The Pioneer

Winter vicissitudes: Reminiscences on the Waning of a Season

To Lahore, with Love

At Home: The intimacy of Hill Stations