Sayantan Datta, Assistant Professor of Practice, Krea-CWP delivered a talk on ‘Science as Storytelling’, in a live podcast hosted by The Scicomm Synapse on 19 April 2026. Focused on students and aspiring communicators, the conversation dived into building a career in science journalism, crafting impactful narratives, and why storytelling might just be the most underrated scientific tool of our time
Dr Sambaiah Gundimeda, Associate Professor, Politics, SIAS delivered a talk titled ‘Caste Sovereignty and Constitutional Authority: Intimacy, Honour Violence and Fraternity in Dandora’ at the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, on 22 April 2026.
About the Talk:
The talk developed the concept of caste sovereignty to understand caste as a socially organised claim to authority within India’s constitutional democracy. Moving beyond approaches that treat caste solely as hierarchy or identity, it examined caste as a non-state power regulating intimacy, honour, punishment, and belonging through extra-legal mechanisms. Using an interpretive reading of Dandora, it showed how inter-caste love is framed by dominant castes as a violation of endogamous order, often provoking collective violence. The subsequent prosecution under the SC/ST Atrocities Act highlighted the conflict between caste authority and constitutional law. The talk concluded that law alone cannot dismantle caste power, and that fraternity remains a fragile and uneven democratic aspiration.
A paper by Professor Madhuri Saripalle, Professor of Economics, IFMR GSB titled Economic analysis of Organic inputs and Biostimulants: Adoption and crop yield in South India has been accepted for publication in Sustainable Futures, Elsevier (Scopus Q1, SJR 0.9).
Gogireddy Naga Malleswara Reddy, IFMR GSB PhD Scholar, presented a research paper titled ‘Contemporary Trends and Policy Dilemmas in Rooftop Solar Adoption in Kerala’ at the International Conference on Reinventing Business Practices, Start-ups, and Sustainability (ICRBSS 2026).The paper was co-authored with Professor Chandrasekaran Nagarajan, Professor, Operations and Strategy, IFMR GSB.
Professor Shanti Pappu, Adjunct Professor, Archeology and History, SIAS has recently co-authored two articles.
Grinding stones from the neolithic “Ashmound” site of Budihal, India has been published in ScienceDirect. And proceeds of a conference in What Is the Acheulean? in Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews35 (2026).
Dr Sumitra Ranganathan, Associate Professor, Musics, SIAS participated in a 2-hour roundtable at the British Forum of Ethnomusicology Annual Conference on 9 April 2026. Titled ‘Entangling Past and Present: Connecting India’s Hidden Musical Histories to Ethnomusicology Today’, the five member hybrid roundtable featured work on neglected or erased fragments of North India’s musical story ranging from historically marginalised Muslim hereditary artisans, tawa’if performers and their ability to navigate multiple spaces, counter-narratives of Dhrupad music in regional courts, the neglected history of the Qawwal Bacche and its links to khayal, and the hidden figure of the cross-dressed male dancer in North India. The panel engaged questions of how digital methods can connect past with present, how today’s oral histories can be reconciled with past accounts, and crucially, the value of entangled, plural and ‘messy’ histories to counter ongoing marginalisation, intolerance, and majoritarian domination.
Trisha Putturaya, SIAS alum, has co-authored an article titled From Diversity to Monotony: Ecological Communities Are Homogenising with Professor Guha Dharmarajan, Professor, Biological Sciences, SIAS. The article has been published in Mongabay.
Dr Sambaiah Gundimeda, Associate Professor, Politics, SIAS has authored an essay in Frontline titled Ambedkar wouldn’t alter a comma. Will you?“
This essay examines how freedom of speech is tested not by outright prohibition, but by conditional invitations and institutional pressures. Using B.R. Ambedkar’s refusal to alter his ‘Annihilation of Caste’ speech for the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal in 1936 as a central example, it highlights the distinction between permission and autonomy. The piece argues that contemporary democracies face similar challenges, where defamation suits, regulatory actions, and institutional anxieties subtly narrow acceptable discourse. Ambedkar’s unwavering stance against censorship, even at the cost of exclusion, serves as a powerful lesson in intellectual courage and the preservation of expressive autonomy in an increasingly curated public sphere.
Pratibha Jain, IFMR GSB PhD Scholar, presented a research paper titled ‘Joining by Chance, Leaving by Choice: A Dual-Theory Exploration of Rural Development Professionals’ Journeys in Nonprofits in India,’ at the 6th International Human Resource Conference (HRIC) held at IIM Bangalore from 8–11 April 2026. The paper was developed under the guidance of Dr Pallavi Pandey, Associate Professor, OB&HR, IFMR GSB, who is also a co-author.
Dr Srajana Kaikini, Assistant Professor, Philosophy, SIAS’ recent poems Sonajhuri, A Little Thing, At a Protest, Jamun Pop ( ಸೋನಾಜ್ಹುರಿ, ಒಂದು ಸಣ್ಣ ಸಂಗತಿ, ಪ್ರತಿಭಟನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ, ನೇರಳೆ ಪಾಪ್ ) translated from English to Kannada by poet Prathibha Nandakumar, have been published by Kannada Prabha in their Yugadi Visheshanka (Yugadi Special Issue 2026).These are part of her forthcoming anthology of poems.
Dr Srajana’s translation of ‘Assembly Line: A Poet’s Reflection‘ by Jayant Kaikini , from Kannada to English, is part of the anthology Unmechanical: Ritwik Ghatak in 50 Fragments edited by Shamya Dasgupta, commemorating Ritwik Ghatak’s cinematic legacy, published by Westland Books.
She is also the Associate Editor for the Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene – Pluriversal Perspectives project, edited by Nathanaël Wallenhorst and Christoph Wulf, being published by Springer-Nature in the ‘Major Reference Work’ series.
