With curious eyes, black hair, and an eagerness to learn, K. Malsawmtluangi approaches her work with a quiet sense of inquiry. A PhD scholar in the Department of Mass Communication at Mizoram University, she has been awarded the IMPART & Nalli Research Fellowship 2025–26, becoming one of only two fellows selected globally, and the first from Mizoram and the wider Northeast to receive it.
Her journey to the fellowship followed a clear but demanding timeline. The application deadline was October 15, 2025, and she submitted her proposal on October 12. In early January 2026, she received an email informing her that she had been shortlisted for the interview round, which took place later that month.
The idea that eventually earned her international recognition, however, did not begin with her current research focus. “Initially, my proposal idea was very different. I was interested in studying the contemporary trend of puan bih suih and coordinated garments in Mizoram, and I even conducted a small pilot survey around it.”
A quiet moment at home shifted that direction. “One Sunday morning, while getting ready for church, my mother asked me to be careful with a particular puan, one that had been passed down from my grandmother. She mentioned that it came from a time of turmoil and is now quite rare.”
What seemed like a small, passing remark stayed with her. “It pushed me to rethink my direction. I began exploring the historical role and evolution of *puan* during periods of political unrest in Mizoram, and through my literature review, I noticed significant gaps in how these narratives were documented.”
That moment became the turning point in her research. “I realised this was not just an academic interest, it was something deeply personal and historically urgent. I had always wanted to engage with a critical period in Mizo history, and this felt like the right entry point.”
Her selected project, *Cloth as Archive of Violence: Weaving Hunger, Memory, and Survival in Mizoram*, examines the 1959 Mautam famine and the insurgency period from 1966 to 1986, placing textiles at the centre of lived experience and memory.
Her engagement with such opportunities has been consistent. “I’ve always been drawn to institutions that engage with history and the arts, so I regularly follow platforms like IFA, Impart, Serendipity Arts, and KNMA. That’s how I came across this open call, almost by chance, or perhaps by grace.”
She describes the application process as intensive and different from typical academic submissions. “Instead of submitting a single document, this required answering a series of detailed questions — from project title and concept to methodology. I spent nearly a week just working through the application.”
Even after being shortlisted, doubt remained. “To be honest, I didn’t think I would make it. I felt I lacked the theoretical depth to fully defend my proposal.” What carried her through, she reflects, was something less tangible. “I think it was my conviction, my curiosity, and the energy I brought into the conversation.”
The IMPART & Nalli Fellowship supports research into under-explored textile histories and practices across South Asia, combining a focus on textile production and design with critical inquiry into art histories.
Open to early- and mid-career professionals across disciplines, it encourages projects ranging from histories of clothing and community textile archives to labour, environmental, and cultural intersections of textiles.
The one-year fellowship, which offers a grant of up to ₹5.5 lakh, supports diverse formats including journalistic inquiry, documentary film, archive creation, and practice-based research.
Fellows are expected to produce a research dossier, a comprehensive project report, and final outputs such as visual essays, interviews, films, or curated exhibitions.
Malsawmtluangi’s project treats Mizo textiles not merely as cultural artefacts, but as living archives.
Focusing on the Mautam famine and the insurgency period, it explores how women continued weaving under conditions of extreme scarcity, using improvised fibres, soot-based dyes, and patterns recalled from memory. In these contexts, cloth functioned not just as clothing, but as barter, bandage, burial shroud, and emotional refuge.
Through trauma-informed oral histories with elderly women weavers, documentation of surviving textiles, and collaborative reconstruction of lost patterns, the research will culminate in a bilingual (Mizo–English) digital micro-archive. This will combine photographs, audio narratives, and short video portraits, along with community screenings and micro-exhibitions in Mizoram.
The second selected fellowship this year was awarded to a Pakistan-based collective comprising Sadqain Riaz, Hassaan Gondal, and Sabeen Yameen. Their project, *Scarred Ecologies: Dye, Land, Bodies*, examines the environmental and social impact of textile production in Faisalabad, tracing how industrial dyeing practices continue to shape land, water, and human life.
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