You came to UC as an international student to pursue a PhD. What attracted you to the University and to Christchurch?
I was drawn to UC by the strength of its Communication Disorders programme and the chance to work with researchers whose work I had admired from afar. The opportunity to pursue a PhD in Speech and Language Therapy at an institution with such a strong clinical-research culture was hard to pass up. Christchurch itself was part of the appeal. Coming from India, I was looking for a place that offered both world-class research and a genuine quality of life, and the idea of studying in a walkable, green city on the edge of such striking landscapes was something I could not find everywhere. From my very first encounter with the place, I felt a warmth from the people that made the decision easy.
Your doctoral studies coincided with the Canterbury earthquakes. How did that experience shape you both personally and professionally?
Living through the earthquake sequence during my doctoral studies was one of the most formative experiences of my life. I remember teaching a phonological disorders class on 22 February, 2011. It was around 12.50pm when I suddenly saw students getting up and hurrying towards the door. I asked one of them, half-seriously, whether they were leaving because they did not like my class or the way I was teaching. The student replied, "No, it is an earthquake, and you'd better leave the building too before it comes down." That was the moment it hit me.
I ran to our department car park and found all the faculty out on the street, one of our professors in the middle of a panic attack. Out on the main road, people had abandoned their cars and were streaming towards the parks and open spaces. One of my PhD colleagues found me and told me she had narrowly missed a building collapsing right in front of her. Then the news began to filter through that the city's skyline had come down. That is the scene I still see vividly when I think of that day.
I was locked out of my lab for four months, and I came close to being homeless: my apartment had significant cracks but was ultimately deemed structurally sound, which allowed my flatmates and me to keep living there. And then the rebuilding began. The entire community came together and supported one another through our most challenging times. Personally, it taught me resilience and perspective in a way nothing else could have. Professionally, it showed me what a research community looks like when it pulls together under pressure, with supervisors, staff, and students supporting one another so the work could continue. I carry that lesson with me still: that scholarship is ultimately a human endeavour, and that steadiness in difficult times is something you build alongside other people, not on your own.
Throughout your time at UC, you received support from a number of mentors and supervisors. What impact did that mentorship have on you?
I was extraordinarily fortunate in my supervisors and mentors at UC — Mike Robb, Maggie-Lee Huckabee, and Richard Jones. Each of them shaped me in a different way. Mike was a constant source of support, making sure I completed my work not only in a timely manner but to a high standard of quality. Maggie-Lee had a gift for challenging my thinking and pressing me with the hard questions, always making sure I was seeing the full picture of my research rather than just the part in front of me. And Richard brought a keen attention to detail and a methodological rigour that raised the quality of everything I produced. Together they gave me a model of what good mentorship looks like: rigorous but generous, demanding of my best work while genuinely invested in me as a person, not just as a student. Much of how I lead and teach today traces directly back to what they showed me, and I have tried to become the kind of mentor to my own students that they were to me. It is no accident that they remained co-authors and collaborators long after I graduated; the relationships we built have lasted well beyond the degree.
Since graduating, you've built a successful academic career in the United States, progressing into a number of leadership roles. What has been most rewarding about that journey?
After UC, I spent 13 years at Oklahoma State University, where I grew from a new faculty member into Department Head, and I have since taken on the role of Associate Dean for Community Partnerships and Impact at the University of Cincinnati. The most rewarding part has not been the titles; it has been the people. Watching students I taught go on to build their own careers, and helping junior faculty find their footing, is deeply satisfying. Moving into leadership has let me shape environments where others can do their best work, which I have come to see as the real privilege of these roles. I have also been grateful that my research on speech motor control has stayed connected to real clinical questions throughout. The through-line in all of it has been impact — on students, on the field, and on the communities our programmes serve.
More than a decade on from completing your PhD, you've returned to UC as an Erskine Fellow. What has it been like coming back to the University in a different capacity and seeing Christchurch again?
Coming back more than a decade later, as a Fellow rather than a student, has been genuinely moving. There is something profound about walking the same corridors where I once felt like an anxious PhD student and now contributing as a colleague. Christchurch has changed remarkably — the city has rebuilt and reinvented itself since the earthquakes — and yet the warmth I remember is exactly the same. The faculty are as welcoming as they always were, the coffee shop where I used to wind down after a busy day is still there, and the park benches where I once sat whenever I needed a quiet moment to myself are just as I left them almost 15 years ago. It is a full-circle moment in the truest sense. UC shaped the foundation of everything I have done since, and being able to give something back to the place that gave me so much is a real privilege.
