Karwaan : The Heritage Exploration Initiative
Writing Academic History Popularly: A Panel Discussion
Arupjyoti Saikia is a Professor of History at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. He has held fellowships at Yale University’s Agrarian Studies Programme, Cambridge University, and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His research focuses on environmental and agrarian histories, with key publications including Forests and Ecological History of Assam, 1826-2000 (OUP, 2011), A Century of Protests: Peasant Politics in Assam since 1900 (Routledge, 2014), and The Unquiet River: A Biography of the Brahmaputra (OUP, 2019). His work has been widely recognized, with A Century of Protests winning the Srikant Dutt Book Prize (2015) and The Unquiet River receiving multiple accolades, including an Honorable Mention for the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize (2021).
Anirudh Deshpande is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Delhi. A distinguished historian of military and social history, he has published extensively on colonial and modern South Asia. His books include The British Raj and its Indian Armed Forces, 1857-1939 (2002), British Military Policy in India, 1900-1945: Colonial Constraints and Declining Power (2005), Class, Power and Consciousness in Indian Cinema and Television (Primus, 2009), and The First Line of Defence – Glorious 50 Years of the Border Security Force (2015). A former Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Fellow, he has contributed to international scholarship, including The Wars of the East India Company, 1740-1849 in The International Encyclopedia of War, edited by Gordon Martel. His latest work, King, Country, and War: Ideology, Memory and Written Indian History, c.1600-1900, explores themes of historical memory and identity.
A.R. Venkatachalapathy is a historian and Tamil writer, currently a Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. His research focuses on the social, cultural, and intellectual history of colonial Tamil Nadu. He has taught at universities in Tirunelveli, Chennai, Singapore, and Chicago and has held research fellowships in Paris, Cambridge, London, and Harvard. A recipient of the V.K.R.V. Rao Prize, he has also been honored with the Vilakku Virudhu and Iyal Virudhu for his lifetime contributions to Tamil literature, along with the Mahakavi Bharati Award. He has written or edited over thirty books in Tamil and was awarded the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award in 2024 for his contributions to Tamil literature and historical scholarship.
Sudeshna Guha is a Professor in the Department of History and Archaeology at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR. Her research spans the histories of visualization, social histories of archaeology, and the making of archaeological heritage and national cultures. Trained in field archaeology, she has an extensive background in curatorship, having managed historical photographic archives and archaeological collections. Her scholarship examines shifts in historiographical methods and notions of evidence, explored in works such as Artefacts of History (SAGE, 2015), which delves into Indian archaeology’s historiography, and The Marshall Albums: Photography and Archaeology (Mapin/Alkazi Collection of Photography, 2010), which explores colonial-era photographic practices of the Archaeological Survey of India. Her latest work, A History of India in 75 Objects, presents Indian history through a curated selection of artefacts. She is also developing research on state formation in Sikkim and the post-colonial archaeology of cultural heritage in South Asia.
Ruby Lal is a Professor of South Asian History at Emory University and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist. Her latest book, Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan (Yale University Press, 2024), has been widely acclaimed and longlisted for the Cundill History Prize. Her previous work, Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan (W.W. Norton, 2018), won the Georgia Author of the Year Award in Biography and was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in History. Empress was also named a top ten book by Time Magazine and has been optioned by Lionsgate for adaptation. Her forthcoming young adult adaptation of Empress, Tiger-Slayer (W.W. Norton, 2025), features illustrations by Molly Crabapple. Ruby Lal’s scholarship extends to gender and cultural histories, with works such as Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World and Coming of Age in Nineteenth-Century India: The Girl-Child and the Art of Playfulness. She has held prestigious fellowships, including at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies, the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto, and the University of Bonn. A prolific writer and speaker, she contributes to major international publications and frequently engages in literary festivals, public talks, and media discussions.
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