We are delighted to announce the recipients of IAFOR grants and scholarships for for The Vienna Conference on Arts & Humanities (VCAH2026) to be held at the Austria Center Vienna, Austria, and online between November 13-17, 2026.
In total, we received 139 scholarship applications.
Launched in 2016, IAFOR’s grants and scholarships programme provides financial support to PhD students and early career academics, with the aim of helping them pursue research excellence and achieve their academic goals through interdisciplinary study and interaction.
Our warmest congratulations go to the following scholarship recipients.
IAFOR Scholarship Recipients
Supriya Choudhary, Fudan University, ChinaChinese Porcelain and the Visual Culture of Luxury in Dutch Golden Age Painting
Ms Supriya Choudhary is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Chinese History and Culture at Fudan University, with research interests in global art history, material culture, and cross-cultural exchange between Europe and China in the early modern period. She is a recipient of the Chinese Government Scholarship. She holds a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art History from Sotheby's Institute of Art and has professional experience working with galleries and auction houses in London, including Bonhams. Her current research focuses on the representation of Chinese export porcelain in Dutch Golden Age painting, examining the relationship between visual culture, luxury consumption, and global trade networks. Her broader academic interests include Chinese export art, collecting culture, maritime trade, and the circulation of objects between Asia and Europe.
Supradip Das, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Remembering Revolution Through Literature: Representation, Memory, and Afterlives of the Cultural Revolution in Chinese Fiction
Mr Supradip Das is a researcher of modern Chinese literature and intellectual history, currently associated with Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He received his training in Mandarin Chinese and Chinese literary studies from Cheena Bhavana, Visva-Bharati University, where he developed a sustained engagement with twentieth-century Chinese thought and culture. His work lies at the intersection of literature, history, and memory studies, with a focus on representations of the Cultural Revolution in post-Mao fiction. His research examines how literary texts negotiate trauma, ideology, and subjectivity, particularly through satire, irony, and personal memory. He is interested in how fiction reworks official narratives and creates alternative modes of remembering. He has served as a Guest Lecturer in Mandarin Chinese for a certificate programme for the Indian Armed Forces at Jadavpur University. His broader interests include Sino-Indian intellectual exchanges and the cultural history of modern East Asia.
Raunak Kumar, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, IndiaVanishing Mediators and Typological Form: The Allegorical Schema of the Nation in Joyce’s Ulysses
Raunak Kumar is a Senior Research Fellow and PhD student at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee (India), pursuing his PhD doctoral study on the modern Irish novel in English. He was awarded an ICSSR travel grant to present his work at the NeMLA Convention in Philadelphia. His recent work has been published in The Modernist Review and has also been well received in prestigious university seminars and conferences such as JNU, Delhi, AMU, Delhi, EFLU Hyderabad and BAMS, United Kingdom.
Palina Salei, Vytautas Magnus University, LithuaniaMedia Framing of Sustainable Food Consumption in British and American News Discourse
Palina Salei is an early career researcher in media and discourse studies. She recently completed an MA in Applied English Linguistics at Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania. Her research examines how news media shape public understanding of social issues such as sustainability and migration, with particular attention to framing, agency and responsibility, and meaning construction. She is preparing to apply for PhD programmes in communication and related interdisciplinary fields.
About IAFOR’s Grants and Scholarships
IAFOR is dedicated to helping young scholars achieve their research and academic goals, while also encouraging them to apply the principles of interdisciplinary study to their work. IAFOR offers travel and accommodation grants as well as full or partial scholarships covering conference registration fees to PhD students and early career academics who might not otherwise have the financial resources to be able to attend our academic conferences.
Awards are based on the appropriateness of the educational opportunity in relation to the applicant’s field of study, financial need, and contributions to their community and to IAFOR’s mission of interdisciplinarity. Scholarships will be awarded based on availability of funds from IAFOR and will vary with each conference. The Organising Committee of the relevant IAFOR conference will award scholarships to eligible applicants with exceptional abstracts accepted for presentation following the blind peer review process.
For further information on IAFOR grants and scholarships, please visit the Grants and Scholarships page of the IAFOR website.
2026 Grants and Scholarships
Grants and scholarships are still available for IAFOR conferences with open abstract submission deadlines. If you are eligible for an IAFOR grant or scholarship and would like to be considered, please submit your abstract to the conference you would like to attend and select the checkbox for the relevant award during the submission process.
