Nikhil Pandhi

Biography

This year Nikhil won the Westcott Memorial History Prize, the Ranjit Singh Goel Memorial Award as well as the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Undergraduate Scholarship. He edits Tarikh, the History Journal of St Stephen's College and has published and presented prize-winning papers at student paper-presentation competitions. Beyond academic work, Nikhil is trained in Indian classical music but enjoys experimenting with Swahili songs and folk-melodies. He has taught himself KiSwahili in order to translate Swahili poems into English. Passionate about reading and writing poetry, Nikhil founded the Poetry Society at St Stephen's and co-founded PAPYRUS, an independent poetry journal to give young poets a voice. For physical relaxation, Nikhil plays basketball, tennis and badminton and is an avid river-rafter. Long-term Nikhil will pursue a career in academia as a historian/archaeologist, with a particular focus on South Asia, Africa and the Indian Ocean.