Mr. Kadiguang Panmei is a doctoral fellow at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and his research is focussed on the documentation and preservation of Zeliangruang (Zeliangrong) Naga folk music. He holds a master’s degree in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics, Delhi university, an MPhil in Social Sciences from TISS Mumbai and is also a certified audio engineer and music producer from ILM academy.
As a member of the tribal community of the Ruangmei (Rongmei) Nagas from Manipur in northeast India, his interests in research include the study of tribal culture from its myriad perspectives on food, the arts, geopolitics and more. He is a recipient of the UGC JRF (2016) for conducting his MPhil-Ph.D. research and was awarded the emerging scholar award at the international food studies conference (2019) held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan for the presentation of his MPhil paper. He was also awarded the Sahapedia–UNESCO Fellowship in 2019 to conduct research on the aural history of the Ruangmei Nagas of Manipur.
He believes that research on music should include a union of both the sonorities of music and the lexical narratives behind its histories and philosophies. His Ph.D. research on Zeliangruang Naga folk music therefore considers not only the important need of the written word but also, the preservation of folk songs and music through recordings and audio archiving.
The Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship for him is a crucial step towards not only completing his Ph.D. research but his vision to document and preserve folk music and to facilitate the recovery of dying oral traditions from the northeast region of India. Through his work, he hopes to add more to the growing stock of research on the people of north east India, uncovering the plethora of ethno-cultural knowledge that this remote region of India has to offer. When he is not reading or writing for his research, he likes to cook, produce music and play the guitar.