Usama Salamat
Damni Kain
We are delighted to announce the results of the BASAS Master’s Dissertation Prize 2024. This prestigious award announced at the BASAS Annual Conference 2024 recognizes outstanding Master’s dissertations on South Asia-related topics in any discipline of the arts, humanities, or social sciences.
Among an unprecedented number of submissions, the judging panel drawn from BASAS council members—chaired by Dr. Dibyadyuti Roy and comprising of Prof. Prathivadi Anand Bhayankaram and Dr. Angela Eyre—selected Damni Kain, Ishita Pal, Narhitya Nawal, Usama Salamat, and Zainab Haleem as the distinguished finalists for the 2024 award. These dissertations were commended for their exceptional intellectual rigor, methodological innovation, and significant advancements in the field of South Asian Studies
From these excellent submissions, the following recipients are declared as the joint winners of the BASAS Master’s Dissertation Prize 2024:
1. USAMA SALAMAT: Between Fear and Advocacy: Unravelling the Dynamics of Blasphemy Law Resistance in Pakistan
2. DAMNI KAIN: Caste in Gig Economy: Exploring the Spatiotemporality of Work in India
The judging panel selected the above two exceptional submissions as the joint winners since they demonstrated the highest standards of academic rigor, originality, and potential impact in South Asian Studies. The panel particularly appreciated the “rigorous research designs that moved beyond normative theoretical and analytical paradigms” as well as the articulation of “complex theoretical concepts and empirical findings…with remarkable lucidity,” which made “the dissertations accessible to a wide academic audience while maintaining high levels of intellectual sophistication.”