Category: Faculty & Staff Spotlight

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.

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.

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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.

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Professor TR Govindarajan, Visiting Professor, Physics, SIAS has penned an article on the fast breeder reactor in The Federal titled India’s PFBR reaches criticality: Milestone after years of delays and questions.

From Bhabha’s three-stage vision to delays, global experience, and questions over timing and approval, the article is a deep dive India’s Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) milestone.

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An article co-authored by IFMR GSB faculty members, Professor Srinivasan Kalyanasundaram, Professor of Practice, Finance; Dr Balasubramanian, Senior Professor and Advisor, Finance, Accounting and Quantitative Finance and Professor Jayaram Ramakrishnan, Professor of Practice, Finance titled Agentic AI: The New Engine of Cost-Optimized Banking, published in The Management Accountant, in the April 2026 issue. This official magazine of The Institute of Cost Accountants of India, has a global readership spread across 94 countries.

Professor S Sivakumar, Dean – Research and Professor, Physics, SIAS has co-authored an article titled ‘Cloning’ hurdle skirted to make perfect copy of quantum state, published in The Hindu.

Article Blurb
The no-cloning theorem is a quantum physics rule that prohibits a user from perfectly duplicating unknown quantum states; researchers have now reported a way around it that could pave the way for technologies like quantum cloud storage, where data can be recovered even if servers fail.

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Dr Sushant Raut, Assistant Professor of Physics, SIAS delivered the Tamil Nadu Science Forum’s 101st Popular Science Lecture. The session titled ‘Three quarks walk into a baryon: The new particle Xi_cc+ at LHC’ was held on 4 April 2026.
The talk was on the Xi_cc+ particle that was recently discovered at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, and was held at Anna Centenary Library, Chennai, attended by people across age groups who were interested in learning about new developments in particle physics.

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An investigative report co-authored by Sayantan Datta, Assistant Professor of Practice, Krea-CWP has been longlisted in the prestigious One World Media Awards 2026 (Print category). Last year, Sayantan and queerbeat staff reporter Ekta Sonawane investigated what happens to transgender people in India after their deaths. The duo’s investigation, which lasted for about six months, revealed the mechanisms through which transgender people are denied dignity in death. The report was published in queerbeat in October 2025 to wide critical acclaim. The report is titled A trans person’s struggle for dignity doesn’t stop even when they die.
Now, the report has been longlisted for the One World Media Awards 2026 in the Print category, becoming the only entry from India in the category. The UK-based One World Media Awards recognises the best media coverage from and about the global south. This year, the Awards received over 500 submissions from 140 countries.

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