PhD candidate Mikaela Chase has been awarded both the Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant and the American Institute for Indian Studies Junior Fellowship to support her dissertation research. Her project is titled “Confronting Asceticism: Law, Ethics, and the Right to Life in the Jain Fast to Death” and will examine Jains’ legal and moral positions as “ascetic persons” within the Indian secular milieu, and specifically women’s expression of such ethics as voluntary death by fasting, exceeding existing constitutional ethics around life. She will conduct her research in India (2018-2020) under the supervision of Prof. Veena Das.