Nishtha is an Affiliate Researcher with CPM and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the ‘Clinical Ethics, Law, and Society’ group at the Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford. She is leading a study that aims to understand the complex dynamics that shape identity descriptors – such as race, ethnicity, and ancestry – in genomic medicine and their impact on mapping accessibility and equitability of care.

Nishtha’s research is situated within the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and she combines it with her previous training and teaching experience in Political Science. She engages with techno-scientific trajectories in healthcare (particularly digital, data-driven technologies and Artificial Intelligence) and their unfolding across diverse socio-political contexts and transcontinental sites. Through her collaborations she has also looked at the politicisation of specific COVID drugs to understand the peculiarities of crisis governance and to analyse how knowledge claims are legitimised.

In her broader research pursuits, Nishtha’s enquiries span the shifting socio-political logics, contested values and competing epistemic frames in healthcare reforms through emerging technologies. She completed her PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. More information about her research can be found here.