Since 2016, Concordia has showcased the outstanding work of its doctoral students through the yearly Public Scholars program.
Earlier this week, Concordia University announced the 2025-26 Public Scholars, an initiative started in 2016 that aims to showcase the work of a cohort of 10 doctoral students.
The selected students represent “the university’s interdisciplinary diversity and excellence in research”. During the upcoming year, they will be invited to share their work through various channels. 4TH SPACE will host a series of events to give them the opportunity to communicate about their research.
This year, Milieux is proud to count two of its members as part of the new cohort: Richy Srirachanikorn and Pramila Choudhary.
Richy Srirachanikorn:
“Instead of a backwards-looking emotion, how can nostalgia help us actualize the futures we always hoped to live?“
Richy Srirachanikorn (he/him) is a doctoral candidate in the Social and Cultural Analysis program. One question is central to Richy’s research: how can we use nostalgia for the future? Rather than studying nostalgia as a historical concept or as a backwards-looking emotion, he looks at how people use technologies to recompose the past not for the way it was, but the way it could have been. Can we remind ourselves of the futures we had hoped for, but never came to be, in the past? What do these “lost futures” mean for the present?
Richy is a founding member of the Nostagain Network, the first student-led research collective in North America exploring the generative uses of nostalgia. Founded at the Milieux Institute in 2022, the network meets annually at the 4TH SPACE for its symposia and research-creation expo.
Richy is a member of TAG (Technoculture, Art and Games)
Pramila Choudhary:
“How can embodied agro-pastoral textile practices, rooted in Traditional Ecological Knowledge, support community-led sustainable futures beyond extractive industrial systems?”
Growing up in the Thar Desert, Pramila Choudhary (she/her) witnessed firsthand how resourcefulness, slowness and care were deeply woven into everyday life. These early experiences shaped her relationship with materials and continue to inform her work as a textile and fashion designer, fiber artist, researcher and community-engaged practitioner.
Trained in textile and industrial design at the National Institute of Design (India) and HSLU (Switzerland), Pramila brings over a decade of experience working with artisan communities, non-profits and global design houses to foster ethical, place-based approaches to making.
Now, as a PhD candidate in Geography and Environmental Studies at Concordia University, her research draws from craft studies, feminist geography, generational knowledge and ecological ethics. Grounded in research-creation, her work connects field research in Rajasthan with participatory workshops in Montreal to foster material literacy and develop climate-responsive, community-centered design frameworks grounded in care and reciprocity.
She is also the founder of Projecthandstitch, an open-access platform for sustainable clothing and material knowledge.
Pramila is a member of the Textiles and Materiality research cluster.
