Student Spotlight: Amorette Lyngwa
March 2, 2026
Amorette Lyngwa is a doctoral student in history with a focus on modern South Asia from Shillong, India. She earned her B.A. in communication studies from Mount Carmel College and M.A. in public history and heritage interpretation from the Srishti Institute of Art, Design, and Technology, both in Bangalore, India, and now studies the urban and social history of Shillong through a community-focused perspective under the guidance of Durba Ghosh at Cornell.
What is your area of research and why is it important?
I work on the urban and social history of Shillong, in Northeast India, through a community-focused perspective, centering the city’s Indigenous residents as narrators and protagonists in its story. I am mostly interested in the way the city and its people transformed from the time it was established as a colonial hill-station on the frontiers of British India in the 19th century to its contemporary position as a state capital that remains marked by narratives of remoteness. My work aims to bring a historically marginalized and underrepresented region and community in South Asia into focus, but through the community’s own voices. I’m curious about the worlds that different people made within the city and in the way in which they remember and make meaning out of these worlds. I envision historical research as a collaborative process, so I use a combination of methods and sources such as oral history, Indigenous methodologies, and archival research to get at a bottom-up history of the city that is multilayered and diverse.
What are the larger implications of this research?
In my research, I center mostly Indigenous, community voices from a region of India that has been perceived as remote and has been historically marginalized structurally, socially, and politically, connecting an often-overlooked part of South Asia to global conversations on Indigeneity, decolonization, and the afterlives of Empire. This not only allows for more representation and visibility for this one community, but also adds to the corpus of knowledge about the Global South coming from the region itself. Because I focus on Indigenous worldviews and community narratives through oral histories, it also allows for a way to rethink how historical research, especially concerning Indigenous communities, can be done. Lastly, my project demonstrates what peripheral cities (or even smaller towns) in the edges of South Asia can offer to our collective knowledge about global currents of history such as colonialism and modernity.
What inspired you to choose this field of study?
I have been studying and learning about the different communities in Shillong my entire life in many ways because it also my hometown. I grew up hearing stories about the city from my grandmother and other elders around me and this was my first introduction to “history” and to “archives.” I kept gravitating toward these stories throughout my higher education, first during my undergrad when I attempted writing down some of these stories (as reimagined folktales) and then in my M.A. program in India, where my research focused more on tribal museums in Shillong as storytelling media. My Ph.D. research today is a continuation and a deepening of these projects, looking closely at the city itself as a participant in my curiosity.
What do you consider to be the importance of taking a community-focused approach to research?
As a researcher from a tribal/Indigenous community in India, I think a community-focused approach to research is crucial in rethinking the imbalance in which knowledge about marginalized communities has historically been produced, allowing for more diverse perspectives that can make the process of knowledge production more accessible. There are many aspects of knowledge, especially in Indigenous communities, that can only be accessed through a community perspective but get overlooked in a more top-down mode of research because they do not fit established modes of what constitutes “knowledge.” Emphasizing a community-focused approach can therefore be significant in decolonizing research, but also in improving the ethical relationship between researchers and their subjects. Too often, research is a one-sided endeavor, which either subjects communities to extractive information gathering or fossilizes them within harmful stereotypes. Engaging the community in research, on the other hand, is a more bottom-up approach, potentially allowing for authority over knowledge to be shared, which could mean fewer misrepresentations, mutual respect of different ways of knowing, and the inclusion of perspectives that don’t often find space in academia.
What are your hobbies or interests outside of your research or scholarship?
My hobbies outside my research are extensions of my love for history, just dressier! I’m a big fan of period dramas on TV, and I love historical textiles and costumes –– you’ll find me visiting museums and vintage exhibitions a lot when I’m travelling! I dabble in crochet; I like making things with my hands when I need a break from my screens. I also love to cook and experiment with new recipes in the kitchen!
Why did you choose Cornell to pursue your degree?
I was really drawn to the work on South Asia done by Prof. Ghosh, my advisor, as well as the graduate students she has recently been working with, which made me feel like I could find a place for my project here. I also think Cornell’s history department was a good fit for me because of its support for public history projects, which makes it a great space for community-focused and oral history approaches to historical research. Another aspect of Cornell that was important to me was the interdisciplinary nature of the graduate programs, which allowed me to take classes across disciplines such as anthropology and American Indian and Indigenous studies, among others. I have grown so much as a scholar in my time here because of all these factors!