George Pioustin is a research scholar in the department of Theatre and Performance Studies, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He holds an MA in Performance Studies from Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) and has worked at AUD in collaboration with Cape Town University on the project ‘Afro- Asia: Musical and Human Migrations across the Indian Ocean’. He has extensively presented research papers at various international music conferences and his research interests include performance traditions within Indian Christianity, Indian classical music, music and migration, as well as minority studies. He is a recipient of Fellowship in Indology instituted by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, for the ‘Outstanding Persons in the Fields of Culture’, UNESCO- Sahapedia Fellowship 2017, among other accolades. A trained Carnatic vocalist, George also writes for the arts supplement of the leading national newspaper in India, The Hindu.
George will be conducting an in-depth study on the Syriac chanting tradition among the Syrian Christians of Kerala as part of the Performing Arts Research Grant 2019-20.