Ms. Meredith Stinger has a Bachelor’s in Sociology & Anthropology with a minor in Political Economy from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR. After graduating, Ms. Stinger was an Americorps VISTA member at a Portland nonprofit, building and managing community relationships to broaden educational opportunities for underserved students of color. As an undergraduate, she was an editor for the Synergia Journal of Gender and Thought Expression, studied abroad in India, and was awarded honors for her senior thesis research in 2019.
Prior to the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, Ms. Stinger has worked as a Program Coordinator for an equity-focused education nonprofit, specializing in graphic design, marketing and data management. Ms. Stinger enjoys drawing, design, sewing and running in her spare time.
Ms. Stinger’s Fulbright-Nehru research explores the role that India’s Aadhaar biometric identification system has played in accessing healthcare resources throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as well as in efforts to track the virus through contact tracing. The use of biometrics and digital identification for resource allocation and contact-tracing is a topic of international discussion and funding, with high-stakes implications for those navigating these new systems. Ms. Stinger seeks to engage in this international discourse through research on how Indian citizens pursue state healthcare resources in the midst of a major public health crisis, and how their strategies are facilitated and/or impeded by the Aadhaar program.