Adarsh Yadav (she/her)

I am a Wellcome Trust-funded PhD researcher in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Exeter. I am based at the Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. I am also a reviews editor at The Polyphony, Institute of Medical Humanities, Durham University and was previously a guest editor for The Polyphony Meets India project. 

About my research:
My interdisciplinary doctoral research project, funded by the Wellcome Trust, explores practices of care and their entanglements with ambiguity, violence, coercion, and power, as well as the alternative and imaginative possibilities literature presents. Through a long-term collaboration with a Bristol-based charity supporting South Asian elders, I ran reading groups with patients, formal carers, and informal carers at the Wellspring Settlement. Together, we read literary texts on schizophrenia, contagious diseases, ageing, and disability. I examine these texts alongside the lived experiences and responses that emerged from our discussions.

The key questions include how certain conditions and illnesses reshape family practices of care; how the Indian and British governments have shaped care; how care diverges from cure; and how literary texts and readers negotiate sociopolitical, cultural, and religious discourses surrounding disability, illness, and mental health conditions. This collaborative method was shaped through discussions with stakeholders, offering an appropriate and sustained approach to engaging with patients, formal carers, and informal carers who could provide informed consent and attend these reading groups.