Our Work – Awards – Geetakshi Arora awarded the first Noor Inayat Khan Prize
MA Gender Studies ALUMNa, GEETAKSHI ARORA, awarded inaugural Noor Inayat Khan Prize
Geetakshi Arora, a student from India who studied for an MA Gender Studies at SOAS University of London during 2014-15, has been awarded the first Noor Inayat Khan Prize for her ‘outstanding’ dissertation. The prize is awarded by the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust and the SOAS South Asia Institute (SSAI) to a SOAS MA student working in the fields of History and Gender Studies with reference to South Asia.
Geetakshi was awarded the £1000 prize for her dissertation, “Goddess Myths in Graphic Novels: Reimagining Indian Femininity” which deconstructs the common gender binaries and gender representations that construct India as a nation.
Professor Michael Hutt, Director of the SOAS South Asia Institute, and Smita Tharoor of the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust presented the prize to Geetakshi in Delhi on 17 March. Professor Hutt said: “We are delighted to announce Geetakshi as the winner of the first Noor Inayat Khan Prize. The prize promotes the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust’s message of liberty, world peace, gender equality and religious tolerance and allows us to showcase the outstanding research which a new generation of South Asia researchers are undertaking at SOAS.“
The Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust is a UK trust established in the memory of Noor Inayat Khan, a descendant of the legendary Tipu Sultan and a secret agent in the Second World War.
For further details on the Trust, and information about scholarships available to SOAS students whose research focuses on South Asia, visit the SSAI scholarship pages.