Hi! I’m Mrinalini, a Rhodes Scholar and incoming MPhil student in Intellectual History at Magdalen College, Oxford. I recently graduated from Columbia as Salutatorian with honors in History and Mathematics.
My interests lie in the intellectual and cultural history of empire, global Enlightenment, and the relationship between religion and political thought. At Columbia, my work spanned twentieth-century Indian women’s activism, eighteenth-century Jesuit missionary writings, gender in constitutional law, and algebraic and geometric topology.
When not reading/writing, I enjoy experimenting with new knitting patterns, swimming, and painting.
Writing
A Topological Proof of the Riemann–Hurwitz Formula. Providing visual intuition, one branched cover at a time. (Columbia Journal of Undergraduate Mathematics)
‘An Appalling Document.’ A comparative analysis of James Bryce’s 1915-16 reports on German and Ottoman Atrocities in wartime Britain. (Chicago Journal of History)
Beyond Geschichte and Itihasa. Theorizing history from the margins in colonial India. (Gadfly Magazine)
Reclaiming Humanity, Removed in Space and Time. Rabindranath Tagore’s “Letter Renouncing Knighthood” in 1919 British India. (The Morningside Review)
The Lost Manuscript and the “Unmasked” Missionary. Pondichéry Jesuit contributions to Enlightenment and colonial fantasies of India. (Honors Thesis, Department of History, Columbia University)
Generating the Mapping Class Group. An algebraic, geometric, and historical survey. (Honors Thesis, Department of Mathematics, Columbia University)
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Miscellaneous
Art Portfolio (2014–present)
Writer and editor page, Columbia Undergraduate Law Review
Inaugural Letter from the Editors-in-Chief, Columbia Journal of Asia
Contributor page, Columbia Rose Teaching Fellows Blog