My name is Isha Lahiri and I had the pleasure of studying at G.D. Birla Centre For Education for 14 years. After finishing high school in 2017, I pursued a career in the humanities and social sciences. I enrolled at the Department of English at Presidency University and minored in Performing Arts, Life Sciences and Geology. In 2019, I was nominated for a fully-funded exchange semester at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) which helped me solidify my research interest in questions of space, labour and media aesthetics.

In 2022 I finished my Master’s in English Literature and won the prestigious Erasmus Mundus Scholarship. This allowed me to study a second research master’s programme in Gender Studies across Utrecht University (The Netherlands) and Central European University (Austria). I graduated from this joint master’s degree with distinction in November 2024. My dissertation invoked art and literature to think through the gendered, racialised and classed cartographies of exhaustion and expropriation that sutures labouring life under late capitalism. I am currently preparing graduate school applications and finishing a postgraduate training programme in Digital Humanities and Cultural Informatics offered by the School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India.

As I reflect on my life’s journey, I can only fondly acknowledge the formative role G.D.B has played in my becoming what I am today. It was my teachers who helped me identify my love for arts and literature and gave me the tools to think both critically and creatively. This took the form of encouraging me to sharpen my close-reading skills and go beyond the textbook in classes while also supporting me in my decisions to participate as a dancer and debater in different inter school and intra-school events. I would often struggle with concentration and remembering things, and would be too overwhelmed by this shortcoming. My teachers addressed this struggle head-on and instead of dismissing me as ‘careless’, they carved out time in-between classes to help me gain conceptual clarity and supervise me as I developed my own ways of engaging the study matter at hand. This understanding from my pedagogues went a long way and gave me the confidence to pursue a research career and experiment with methodologies when designing my questions.

I was never really a class topper and always felt that I would not survive in this society that judged you by your marks. In moments of deep self-doubt, I would open up to my teachers for advice and they would share these wonderful anecdotes with me. These little sessions prompted me to appreciate the power of narratives and see them as sites of collective memory and knowledge-building. Above all, such moments of connection helped me persevere and showed me that, after all, there was a network of people who did care and believe in me, even when I couldn’t.

G.D.B. through its extensive outreach programmes and extracurricular activities brought me in contact with inspiring leaders from across the world and cultivate friendships that last the test of time. This exposure allowed me to strengthen my interpersonal skills and helped me thrive in international study and work environments. Furthermore, it also prompted me to challenge myself to do more and keep striving for improvement. So even as an active full-time student, I often resorted to working in different roles for different kinds of organisations. So far I have worked for nonprofit institutions, universities, media houses, museums, Microfinance companies to complement my theoretical pursuits in the academic classroom.

I have the deepest admiration for this wonderful institution and am grateful to have grown up in its corridors, classrooms and playground.

Submission by:

Isha Lahiri (Batch of 2017) Student

Digital Humanities and Cultural Informatics
School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India