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 an associate editor for The Polyphony, Institute of Medical Humanities, University of Durham and was previously a guest editor for The Polyphony Meets India project. I was an editor for the The Postgraduate Journal of Medical Humanities' 2024 volume called 'Greening The Medical Humanities: The Environmental and the Body in Conversation.'

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.

Funding/Grants/Awards:

• 2022 – Ongoing: Wellcome Centre for the Cultures and Environments of Health and University of 
Exeter PhD Studentship
Sponsors: University of Exeter and the Wellcome Trust
Fully funded PhD scholarship.

• 2025 – HASS Activity Award, University of Exeter
Received funds to organise the annual South Asia Centre ECR/PGR Conference
• 2024 – The Dean’s Commendation for PGR Academic Citizenship 
• 2023 – Researcher-Led Initiative Award, University of Exeter 
Received funds to organise a medical humanities conference titled 'Medical Humanities and (In)Justice: Crossing Disciplines and Contexts'
• 2015-2018 – Meritorious Award for Best Student 2nd Rank, ARSD College, University of Delhi, India

Teaching Experience:

Selected Conferences/Talks:

• [Invited Online Talk] Nov 2024 – "Bordering Bodies: Public Health and Noninnocent Care in Literary Studies"
Organiser: University of Turku’s the Cultural Interaction Researcher Network KULTVA, the Centre of Language and Wellbeing (LaWe), and the Research Centre for Culture and Health, Finland.
• [Conference] Sep 2024 – "Rethinking Care Work: Contemporary Indian Fiction"
Organiser: British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) Conference, King’s College London.
• [Conference] May 2024 – "Schizophrenia and Care in The Boy with a Topknot by Sathnam Sanghera"
Organiser: South Asia Centre, University of Exeter.
• [Conference] May 2024 – "Rethinking Identity through Illness: Fiction in Postcolonial India." Disrupted Identities in the Light of “Post-Everything”
Organiser: International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, University of Giessen, Germany. 
• [Conference] April 2023 – “’Am I doing this okay?’ Uncertainty and the Critical Medical Humanities.” What matters for critical medical humanities now & how does critical medical humanities matter? Critical: NNMHR Congress 2023.
Organiser: Northern Network for Medical Humanities Research and the Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University.