Guru Nanak Global Perspectives Conference 2025

Dilshaan Singh Grewal is a Market Risk Strat at a leading investment bank and has previously worked as a Quantitative Developer on the FX Spot desk and as a Data Scientist building AI models for fraud detection. He holds a First-Class Honours degree in Computing from Imperial College London, where his research focused on interpretable deep learning, model compression, and explainable AI. He received the David Howarth Group Project Prize for PySpArX, a Python-based framework enhancing neural network interpretability through sparse argumentative explanations.

Paper: From Hallucination to Illumination: Engineering Truth in the Age of AI through Data Integrity Architectures for Authentic Representation of Sacred Texts

Gurkarishma Dhillon is a graduate research student currently pursuing a Master of Science in Women’s and Reproductive Health at the University of Oxford. She holds a Specialized Honours Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology and Health Sciences from York University in Toronto, Canada. Gurkarishma’s research background includes her role as a Research Assistant in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto, where she contributed to projects aimed at enhancing access to primary health care for women from refugee communities. Gurkarishma’s research interests are driven by a commitment to promote equitable and culturally competent healthcare solutions that address the unique needs of underserved populations. In addition to her research, Gurkarishma also serves as a tutor within the Medical Sciences Division at the University of Oxford. Beyond her academic endeavours, Gurkarishma is the Co-Founder of the Punjabi Women’s Network, a community group spanning four countries, with over 1000 members dedicated to advancing the academic and professional pursuits of Punjabi women globally.

Paper: PRAMH UK: Maternal Mental Health Amongst South Asian women in the United Kingdom

Harwinder Singh is a researcher exploring identity, citizenship, and how people engage with democracy, especially in relation to social justice. His work stems from a foundation of interpreting Gurbani and its application in everyday life. Alongside his role as editor at naujawani, Singh writes and edits for the Sikh Education Council quarterly Sikh Sunehan and contributes to the organisation’s range of publications. Having shared ideas at an international level within the Sikh community, he is presently working on a project exploring the concept of time through a Gurmat lens.

Paper: Exploring the economic dimensions inherent in the Sikh way of life

Inderpreet Kaur is a researcher and political caseworker whose work engages questions of theology, ethics, and social justice. She read Theology, Religion and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge, where she served as President of the Cambridge University Sikh Society, participated in the Cambridge Interfaith Forum, and received the Helena Powell Prize for her undergraduate thesis. Her master’s dissertation, Sikh Theological Imaginations of the Just Society with Respect to the Question of the Other, explores Sikh conceptions of justice, sovereignty, and the ethical encounter with alterity. She now works in British politics, focusing on system accountability and representation.

Paper: Sikh theological imaginations of the just society with respect to the question of the other

Jaspreet Singh is a student from Punjab who recently defended his PhD thesis, “Explorations of the Narratives of the Lived Experiences of Sikhs in the West Midlands Area of the UK.” His research proposes five unique pathways through which Sikhs experience workplace inclusion or exclusion. He is currently pursuing an MA in History with a specialization in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Leicester. Jaspreet is a member of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He contributes to Genocide Watch, using his research and advocacy to protect human rights.

Paper: Genocide Denial in the context of Teeja Ghallughara (Genocide of Sikhs ) in 1984

Dr Kiran Sahota is a military historian exploring military history through a female lens. Kiran has created 3 national exhibitions on Indian servicemen and women in the world wars. Current project ‘Indian Women and War’ explores the contributions made by Indian women during the second world war that have been overlooked when it comes to mainstream war narratives. The research and projects have been exhibited at House of Lords, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, HMS President and The National Archives. Kiran is also the founder of Believe in Me CIC, a community organisation that empowers young people and women from marginalised backgrounds through education.

Paper: Sikhi with the world wars

Dr. Kuldeep Singh is the Punjabi lecturer at the University of California, Davis and Stanford University. He is also the Punjabi lecturer for the UC Punjabi Without Walls program for students throughout the ten UC campuses. During the summer, he also teaches Elementary Punjabi in the prestigious summer intensive program for junior scholars at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He earned his Ph.D. in Sikh Studies from Punjabi University in Patiala. He is frequently invited to deliver lectures at the Harmandir Sahib and other Gurdwara Sahibs around the world.

Paper: Jau Tau Prem Khelan Ka Chao (If you Desire to Play this Game of Love…) and the Influence of Gurbani on Global Sikh Resistance

Nicole Ranganath is the Associate Director and Assistant Professor in Middle East/South Asia Studies at the University of California, Davis. She has authored articles, book chapters and a book specializing on the history of gender, faith, and music in the South Asian diaspora. She participates in international collaborations centring on digital and oceanic humanities, with fieldwork in California, India, Pakistan, and Fiji.

Her recent book, Women and the Sikh Diaspora in California: Singing the Seven Seas, was published by Routledge Press in 2024. Her other creative work includes a 2018 PBS documentary, “Jutti Kasoori,” that documents the history of women in California’s Punjabi community. She is also the founding curator of the UC Davis Punjabi and Sikh Digital Archive that was launched in 2016. With a generous grant from the University of California, she helped establish the UC Punjabi Without Walls online curriculum as well as the Punjabi program at UC Davis, which is now among the largest in North America. Her research is funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the American Association of University Women, California Humanities, and the University of California.

Paper: Jau Tau Prem Khelan Ka Chao (If you Desire to Play this Game of Love…) and the Influence of Gurbani on Global Sikh Resistance

Dr. Nadia Singh is an Assistant Professor in Economics, Northumbria University, UK and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy of UK. Her research interests are centred in ecological and gender economics and application of Sikh Philosophy to issues of sustainability and ethics. She completed her PhD at Oxford Brookes University. She has published her work in leading journals like the World Development, Journal of Development Studies and Gender, Work and Organisation. She has recently edited a manuscript titled Faith Traditions and Sustainability: New Views and Practices for Sustainable Development by Springer.

Paper: Raag and Resistance: Guru Nanak’s musical legacy and it’s echo in Punjab’s contemporary social movements

Nishtha Sood holds a degree in Politics and International Relations from SOAS University of London. Having written on terrorism laws, as well as minority and linguistic rights in India, her work focuses on documenting social and political issues and people’s movements in India.

Paper: Sikhs and Kurds: Parallels in Stateless Nationalism

Pritam Singh took his DPhil from Oriel College, Oxford and is Professor Emeritus at Oxford Brookes Business School. He has held visiting positions at the University of Oxford and at many universities in Brazil, Russia and India.

He has published four single-authored and four co-edited books, including the Routledge Handbook of Punjab Studies (2026). He is on the editorial board of several journals.

The World Association of Political Economy has awarded him the Distinguished Achievement Award in Political Economy, and the University of California (Riverside) honoured him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for ‘distinguished contribution’ to Sikh and Punjab Studies.

Paper: Why has the Sikh community not produced world-class public intellectuals?

Satwant Kaur is a PhD Scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Her doctoral research explores the Philosophy of Food in Sikhism, examining the metaphysical, ethical, and ontological dimensions of food in Sikh thought and practice. She holds an M.A. in Philosophy from Panjab University, Chandigarh where she was awarded the Gold Medal for academic excellence. She has qualified two national examinations in India—UGC-NET (JRF) and GATE—in Philosophy. Her broader research interests include Sikh philosophy, ethics, and the intersection of religion and food studies.

Paper: The Economy of Langar: Sikh Food Philosophy as a Model for Economic Justice

Vithya Subramaniam recently graduated with a DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford with a thesis exploring ‘becoming Singaporean Indian’ and this identity and belonging as emergent with the material world. Prior to this, her research focused on the traditions of memory as experienced through spaces and images in the Sikh tradition, primarily within Indian Punjab. Broadly, Vithya is interested in questions of materiality, memory, and meaning-making. Vithya now teaches with the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore and occasionally extends her academic inquiry into theatre and museum-making as parallel fields of practice.

Paper: Many Maps of Khalistan: Cartography and Memory