We are delighted to announce the results of the BASAS Master’s Dissertation Prize 2025. This prestigious award announced at the BASAS Annual Conference 2025 recognises outstanding Master’s dissertations on South Asia-related topics in any discipline of the arts, humanities, or social sciences.
Among many submissions, the judging panel drawn from BASAS Council members—chaired by Dr Dibyadyuti Roy and comprising of Professor Shandana Khan Mohmand, Dr Arvind Kumar and Dr Simona Vittorini—selected Kirin Das Gupta Mueller’s dissertation, ‘Linguistic Health Justice: Suppressive Language Politics and Impacts on Health for Linguistic Minorities in Bangladesh’ as the winner. Congratulations, Kirin!
The judging panel’s remarks:
The dissertation makes an exemplary contribution by introducing the concept of “enforced linguistic isolation” (ELI) – a phenomenon where governmental and authoritarian infrastructures actively prevent communities from learning dominant languages. This represents a significant theoretical innovation that expands beyond traditional scholarship focused on Indigenous language suppression and erasure. The author’s identification of this unique form of suppressive language politics fills a critical gap in existing literature and provides fresh analytical framework for understanding linguistic oppression. The research demonstrates ambitious intellectual scope by successfully linking language and health justice across different contexts – from settler colonialism to forced displacement. The multi-faceted approach combining virtual interviews, humanitarian document analysis, and theoretical examination creates a comprehensive analytical foundation. The transparent acknowledgment of positionality and adaptation to funding challenges (including USAID funding loss in 2025) reflects scholarly maturity. The author’s ability to transcend dominant theoretical paradigms while maintaining methodological rigor showcases sophisticated critical thinking, even as the methodology section could benefit from clearer distinctions between analytical approaches and data gathering techniques. This work significantly advances South Asian Studies by establishing fundamental connections between language and health justice, particularly relevant for understanding Rohingya experiences in Bangladesh. The proposed “linguistic health justice” framework offers universal applicability, linking experiences of forcibly displaced and Indigenous communities across regional contexts. The dissertation’s connection to capabilities approach theory and its emphasis on language justice as essential for the “capacity to be healthy” provides valuable theoretical tools for future research and policy development. The scholarship’s clarity, accessibility, and compelling presentation of complex material ensures broad academic and practical relevance, positioning it as a seminal contribution to contemporary South Asian Studies discourse.
The two runners up are:
- Shefali Bhatia, ‘Striving Towards Prabuddha Bharat: Utopian Visions in Sankisa, Uttar Pradesh’
- Mysha Maliha, ‘How do net-zero commitments by fast fashion brands cascade downwards to suppliers in Bangladesh in a power asymmetric environment?’