Lylaah Bhalerao
All Disciplines Award, New York University - Ancient World Studies
Lylaah was raised amidst love, laughter, stories, and multi-cultural pride in North London by a mixed family of British Indian Hindus and British Indo-Guyanese Muslims. She naturally advocates for all these communities and her background guides her commitment to fostering cultural exchange. She intends to channel this into her doctoral research and broader activities as a Fulbrighter. As an academic activist, Lylaah is committed to taking critical, cross-cultural approaches to ancient art and heritage. She earned a BA (with double first-class honours) and an MPhil in Classics at the University of Cambridge. Whilst there, she also held numerous leadership positions including Students’ Union President at Murray Edwards College and Co-President of Cambridge’s ‘Mastana’ (annual charity South Asian Cultural Variety Show). Most recently, she has led the campaign for race equality measures and decolonisation in the Cambridge Faculty of Classics. Her academic thesis - “Displaying Greece in the British Museum in the Era of Decolonisation” - built further on this activism. She is now excited to start as a PhD student in the USA and to serve her new families of Fulbrighters, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, and the wider New York University community.