Krea History Lecture Series

Dr Shanti Pappu is the founder/secretary of Sharma Centre for Heritage Education (SCHE), India and a former Professor of Prehistory at the Deccan College, Pune, India. She founded the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education in 1999, and along with Dr. Kumar Akhilesh, has been conducting research programs, training courses and public outreach programs for children and teachers in archaeology and associated sciences. For over 20 years, her team has been investigating aspects of early prehistoric occupation of South Asia, through multidisciplinary efforts, involving excavations at the site of Attirampakkam and Sendrayanpalayam, and studies across parts of northern and southern Tamil Nadu. These projects include establishing and coordinating teams of scientists from India, and abroad, facilitating collaborative networks to address questions related to India’s prehistoric past, through intertwined approaches in archaeology, geomorphology, palaeoenvironments, geochronology, remote sensing, and ethnoarchaeology. She has published research papers in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature and Science, a book, and is currently editing a three-volume series on the prehistoric archaeology of Tamil Nadu. She is also interested in the history of prehistoric research in India, and is currently investigating the life and work of 19th century prehistorians in India. Currently, she is a Visiting Professor at Krea University.

Dr Dinyar Patel is a historian of modern India, focusing on Indian nationalism, the city of Bombay/Mumbai, and the Parsi Zoroastrian community. Prior to joining SPJIMR, he was Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, where he received Fulbright and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships. Patel earned his PhD in History from Harvard University in 2015 and his BA in International Relations from Stanford University in 2004. Patel’s first book, Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism, was published by Harvard University Press and HarperCollins India in May 2020. The book is a biography of Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917), India’s first nationalist leader and the first Asian elected to the British Parliament. Aside from detailing the moderate, pre-Gandhian phase of Indian nationalism—a period that has been significantly neglected by scholars—Patel’s book demonstrates how Naoroji contributed to the growth of global anti-colonialism by putting Indian nationalism in touch with Irish nationalism, British and European socialism, American Progressives, and African-American and West Indian political activists.

Dr David Arnold is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Warwick and previously taught at the University of Dar es Salaam, the University of Lancaster and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. A founder member of the Subaltern Studies group, he has been a visiting professor in Chicago and Zurich and is a Fellow of the British Academy. His published work includes Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India; Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India; Gandhi; The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape and Science, 1800–1856 and Everyday Technology: Machines and the Making of India's Modernity.

Dr Bhanya Bhukya is an active historian, specialising in modern Indian history, from the undergraduate to Masters level, with a strong interest in the history of subaltern and marginalized groups. He did his M. A. and M. Phil from Hyderabad Central University and PhD from the University of Warwick, UK, on Ford Foundation International Fellowship, focusing on the topic of ‘Power, Subaltern and Identity: Making of the Lambada Community (a nomadic/pastoral community) in Hyderabad State’. He was also a Postdoctoral Fellow in 2010 at SOAS, University of London on a British Council Visiting Fellowship. His research interests are community histories, the effects of power/knowledge, governmentality and dominance on subaltern communities, particularly adivasis; the state and nationalism, and identity movements by forest and hill peoples in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Before teaching at the University of Hyderabad, he taught history at Osmania University from 1997 to 2010, and at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad from 2010 to 2014. He is also associated with adivasi (indigenous) people’s human rights activism in India. Some of his publications are: History of Modern Telangana (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2017), The Roots of the Periphery. A History of the Gonds of Deccan India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017), Subjugated Nomads: The Lambadas Under the Rule of Nizams (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2010) and several articles in leading international social science journals.