An Associate Professor at Krea University, Dr John Mathew concluded a four-year stint in the same capacity at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, in the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2018 before moving to his current position. He has taught previously at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Massachusetts; and Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. With Bachelor’s, Master’s and MPhil degrees in Zoology from the Madras Christian College, Chennai (Madras), Tamil Nadu, he holds an additional Master’s (AM) in Medical Anthropology from Harvard University, and two doctorates, one in Ecological Sciences from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, and the other in the History of Science from Harvard University. His instructional experience includes Anthropology, Biology, Geology, History and the History of Science. At Krea, he has co-taught foundational courses in the first year, including Scientific Reasoning and Exploring the Social and the Historical, and is currently involved with co-leading Past, Present and Predicted Environments in Environmental Studies, and Life at Different Scales in the Biological Sciences, the latter which as a discipline he also co-anchors.
Dr Mathew is in the process of revising a book length manuscript, To Fashion a Fauna for British India, due for submission to Oxford University Press after reviews. He is also actively researching the plague and influenza epidemics in India in the 1890s and 1918-19 respectively.
His interests are fundamentally cross-disciplinary. He retains a deep interest in theatre and music, both of which he brought into conversation with his own research, in the writing and performance of a musical at IISER Pune titled The Sun Was White, The Moon Disobedient, with the students of the institute in the main. He also founded and directed the institute’s choir there, which he has also done at Krea, helping to helm the December production of A Christmas Carol from both a theatrical and choral perspective in 2019.
