Faculty and staff

OCHS Research Officers

British Hinduism Oral History Project 2000–4

Arya Burt (2004)
Arya Burt is Archivist for the OCHS Hindu Archive. Arya gained her Bachelor of Arts Degree, majoring in psychology and sociology from the University of New South Wales, Sydney in 1991. She then went on to complete a Master of Arts Degree in psychology at the University of Sydney in 1992. Arya completed work on setting up a small archive in Philadelphia, USA in 2001 and established a lending library at the College of Vedic Studies near London in 2002. Arya is enthusiastic to see the history of Hinduism in the United Kingdom preserved and promoted, and is working towards setting up the Hindu Archive and Hindu oral history projects, as a valuable resource which will help meet this goal. She is currently pursuing a DPhil in Religious Studies at the University of Leeds.

Drapuadi_Stewart_04

Draupadi Stewart (2003–4)
Draupadi Stewart served as Project Manager and Research Officer for the British Hindu Oral History project. She began work with the OCHS team after graduating from the University of Sunderland in July 2003 with a BA in Media Production.

Shalini Sharma (2000–3)
Shalini Sharma served as the first Research Facilitator for the British Hinduism Oral History Project. She came to the team from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London where she was completing her PhD thesis on colonial governance in pre-Partition Punjab. Before SOAS, she studied at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. She gained a research degree in Politics from Cambridge University in 1994. Shalini is interested in the effects of migration on self-perception and faith, as well as the pursuit of Oral History as a legitimate historical record of ordinary individual lives.

Hindu Youth Survey 2001

Romila Santosh
Romila Santosh gained her undergraduate degree in Chemistry at University College London and her MSc in Research Methods in Psychology from the University of Reading. Romila also studied Hindi and Sanskrit.
Romila has been involved in a number of research projects in the field of Psychology and Applied Social Studies and in recent years has been involved with community development projects based in local government. Romila was the driving force behind the Hindu Youth Research project 2001, which set out to investigate in greater depth how Hindu youth's religious beliefs impact on their perception of a variety of personal, social and cultural issues.
She has an interest in the Vedic sciences and has looked into Vedic astrology, and studied the science of Vastu. She is currently studying Ayurveda.
Her research interests include: Research into Vastu and Ayurveda from both clinical and social perspectives.

Dr Savita Vij
Savita Vij was privileged to join OCVHS Research team pioneering the Hindu Youth Survey with Romila Santosh. She completed her Phd thesis; 'The Politicisation of Hindu Identities in a University Context', in 2003, in the Sociology and Cultural Studies department, Birmingham Univeristy. Her academic interest in work upon young Hindus has progressed from her undergraduate years at Royal Holloway University through her BA honours in Sociology with Social Policy received in 1999. In relation to the recent findings of both her thesis and the Hindu Youth Survey, she hopes to take part in a further project to pursue work around the second- and third-generation Hindus in multicultural Britain; their 'needs', 'aspirations' and 'identities'.