Professor Bishnu Mohapatra, Professor, Politics, SIAS and Director – Moturi Satyanarayana Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences delivered a talk titled ‘Reimagining the Humanities: Potential and Possibilities’ at SAU Thought Cafe, hosted by South Asian University.
A chapter authored by Neha Mishra and Sayantan Datta, Assistant Professors of Practice, Krea-CWP, titled Paam Padati, has been published in the book Decolonial Keywords: South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes. The book has been published by Tulika Books and Columbia University Press, and has been edited by Sasanka Perera and Renny Thomas.
Brief Note About the Chapter
In this chapter, authors investigate attitudes and practices associated with paam padati — a common greeting among the hijras — through vignettes from online interviews with hijra, transgender and intersex persons. They identify how caste is simultaneously invoked and denied in discursive practices like paam padati. They also document other emerging greetings in hijra collectivities across India (jai shri ram, jai shri mahakaal). In doing so, they identify how contemporary forms of colonialism — like Hindutva/Hindu nationalism — rewrite and redirect the respect borne by gestures of greeting. By analysing their interlocutors’ narratives, they underscore the urgency of decolonial praxis in gender and sexuality studies in India to interrogate (i) the erasure of caste in historicizing cultural practices of gender- and sexually transgressive communities; and (ii) the quest for seeking precolonial roots by invoking one’s belonging to dominant religious collectivities alongside a fractured belonging to the subjugated collectivity. The authors argue that decolonial praxis in gender and sexuality studies includes an analytical lens that combines frameworks of religion, caste and coloniality.
Brief Note About the Book
The volume presents a set of keywords and concepts anchored in the region’s languages and its vast cultural landscape. It reiterates specific attitudes, ways of seeing and methods of doing, embedded in the historical and contemporary experiences in South Asia. The words, concepts, ideas, and attitudes in this volume explore the contexts of their production and how their meanings have changed at different historical moments. Individual essays, from across disciplines, argues for the importance in moving away from the intellectual shackles of colonial and neo-colonial experiences while also not succumbing to the traps of local reductionist nativisms and cultural nationalisms.
Dr Shriddha Shah, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, SIAS, was invited as a panellist for the session ‘In Memory of JPS Uberoi’ at the STS India Network Conference: Co-shaping of Science, Technology, and Society in India, held from 15–17 December 2025 at OP Jindal Global University, Sonepat, NCR, Delhi.
Dr Lakshmi Narayanan Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies, SIAS, participated in the third session of the ANRF PMECRG Lightning Talk Series, an initiative aimed at popularising the Prime Minister’s Early Career Research Grant (PMECRG) Awardees, on 12 December 2025.
During the session, he spoke about his research field and shared insights into his ongoing research project. The event featured multiple awardees and was telecast live on YouTube.
Dr Swarnamalya Ganesh, Associate Professor of Practice, Literature and Global Arts, SIAS, served as a mentor for the Baari Dance Festival 2025, held from 12–14 December in Chennai—a weekend celebrating dance, dialogue, and meaningful collaborations. She also facilitated a workshop titled ‘Courting Cultures’ at the festival, where she explored the cosmopolitan past of early modern South India, tracing the multicultural influences embedded within Sadir. Drawing on interactions with Islamic lineages, as well as Persian, Dakhni, Marathi, West Asian, and European traditions, the workshop highlighted how South India’s artistic practices are deeply interconnected and collectively inherited.
Yashvi Sharma, Cohort of 2022-26, SIAS and a star capstone student, represented India at the IKMF World Championship held in Hungary and delivered a remarkable performance by winning a gold medal in kettlebell sport. Competing in the one-arm long cycle marathon event, she completed an impressive 592 repetitions with a 12 kg kettlebell, securing the top position at the world stage.
Dr Sayandeb Chowdhury, Senior Assistant Professor, Literature, SIAS has recently published an article in Scroll.in on Tom Stoppard, a giant of modern British theatre, who passed away recently. Read more
He also published an article connecting the centenary of Ritwick Ghatak with the unveling of the infamous SIR exercise in Bengal for The Federal.
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Dr Anannya Dasgupta, Director, Centre for Writing & Pedagogy and Associate Professor, Literature and Arts has been invited by Shiv Nadar University – School of Law in Chennai to teach in their practitioner semester. Dr Dasgupta’s sessions will be on on Peer Collaboration and Review in the process of writing and revision.
Professor Chiranjib Sur, Visiting Professor, Computer Science, SIAS recently presented a paper ‘Accelerating Temporal Triangle Counting and Betweenness Centrality on GPUs’ (in collaboration with IIT Chennai, IIT Ropar and Shell) in 29th Annual IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC2025).
Another research paper titled Energy-Aware Runtime Resource Harmonizer for Co-running Applications by Professor Sur ( in collaboration with IIT Delhi and Shell) was nominated for the ‘Distinguished Paper Award’ at HiPC 2025 (IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing, Data, and Analytics). Professor Sur was also invited for a keynote talk at the Workshop at Supercomputing India Conference held on 10 December 10 2025. He was also the General Vice-Chair on the 32nd IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing, Data, & Analytics held between 17-20 December 2025.
Dr Preeti Gulati, Assistant professor, History, SIAS, was invited to the Manorama Hortus Art and Literature Festival in Kochi, as a panelist to discuss her new book Women Writing History. Author Sindhu Rajasekaran led the conversation on history, sexuality, pedagogy and being a woman historian.