Archives at NCBS | Team Profiles
The Archives at NCBS (https://archives.ncbs.res.in/) is a public centre for the history of science in contemporary India. We are a diverse team, bringing in varied skillsets and experiences, toward the common aim of enabling public, digital access to diverse histories of science from across the sub-continent.
Various technical teams from across NCBS – civil, architecture, electrical, IT, instrumentation, hospitality – helped conceptualize and build the physical structure of the Archives at NCBS. Over the past six years, the archiving team has been a crew of about 100 students and professionals working for different stints (months to years!) between 2016 and 2024. These include archivists and historians, designers and conservators, journalists and writers, scientists and administrators and librarians, students of sociology, engineering, history, photography, the sciences, marketing, education, and architecture and design. The Archives is governed by a guiding Archives Policy, an internal Archives Review Committee and an external advisory board (for more about this, head to the About Page: https://archives.ncbs.res.in/about).
Get to know us and read the profiles of current team members. If you want to know what our alumni have been up to, head to the Archives Alumni Page (https://archives.ncbs.res.in/alumni). And if you'd like to be part of this team, write to us at archives at ncbs dot res dot in
Revision Date: Dec 1, 2024
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Anjali Ramachandran
I work as an archivist at the Archives at NCBS, where I coordinate archival processing and lead education outreach through internships, school and volunteer programs. I have worked at IIT Bombay Archives and Museum as an archivist and researcher, and was part of a team that set up the Virtual Experiential Museum on Ajanta, a digital museum on the Ajanta caves at the National Museum, New Delhi.
I also made a short documentary on the role of the local community in the conservation of heritage precincts in Mumbai.
Prior to this, I taught English in a high-school in Pune.
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Carol Blaizy D'Souza
I am an education officer at the Archives working towards developing curricular material using the archival collections and coordinating an education programme focussed on schools.
I am a researcher, poet and translator from Bangalore.
A collation of my work can be found here, https://linktr.ee/cblaizd
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Deepika S.
I work as Senior Archivist and manage new accessions and oral histories, among other things. I’ve previously worked in the Indian Institute of Science’s Archives and Office of Communications and helped produce their magazine Connect. Prior to this, I worked as a journalist, and have written and edited for The Hindu, the long-form journalism platform Yahoo! Originals India, and the feminist webzine The Ladies Finger. I also worked for Agents of Ishq, a multimedia sex education project.
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Dhatri S Aradhya
I work as an archivist, handling physical material at the archives to arrange and catalogue them for online access and offline storage. I am also a graphic designer. I like to curate using objects in the archives. I also occasionally work with the team to develop posters and other visual outputs to aid our public engagement.
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Hari Sridhar
I help manage the oral history programme of the Archives at NCBS (National Centre for Biological Sciences), and am currently involved in two oral history projects examining the contemporary history of conservation in India. Over the last eight years, I have been conducting another long-form interview project with authors of famous scientific papers in Ecology and Evolution (https://reflectionsonpaperspast.com/). My other major research interest is in understanding animal heterospecific sociality, a topic I researched during my PhD and post-doctoral years at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and which I continue to stay in touch with through collaborative projects. I also teach occasionally at the Azim Premji University and have been an editor of Current Conservation in the past.
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Kinjal Shah
I am currently working as an intern for conservation at Archives at NCBS. I come from a fine arts background where I completed my bachelors in visual arts (BVA) with a specialisation in ceramics. I also apprenticed with a ceramic sculptor in Kolkata for 1 year after which I started instructing at Clay Station, a community ceramic studio. I have also been a part of a few exhibition shows and workshops in India and internationally.
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Ojas Kadu
I work as a Software Architect for web development at the Archives at NCBS, where I maintain the open source forks of ArchivesSpace – an archives information management application and DSpace – a repository management application for digital content. I also implement the end-to-end workflow to make the collection catalogues and digital objects at Archives at NCBS accessible to the public and work on developing tools for archival annotation, research and discovery. Prior to this, I have worked at the IDC School of Design at IIT Bombay as a Project Technical Assistant and was part of the team that set up the Virtual Experiential Museum on Ajanta at the National Museum, New Delhi.
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Parvathy Venukuttan
I work as an archivist, organising and cataloguing collections at the Archives at NCBS to make them accessible freely to the public. With a background in environmental history, I have archived collections that document the intricate relationships of communities with their environment and highlight the critical narratives of environmental activism. I also try to actively research these collections to find connections and curate research guides to aid scholars and the public navigate our collections.
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Preeti Shree Venkatram
I am a Researcher-Subject Expert- Archives of Ecology at the Archives at NCBS, primarily associated with the Making of Indian Conservation project. Previously, I have worked on research projects at Azim Premji University (APU), Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) and Centre for Policy Research (CPR)-Namati Environmental Justice Programme. These have dealt with a vast range of topics associated with the environment. To name a few- Krishnarajasagar Project under the Mysore Presidency, climate change, the Smart Cities Mission, environmental compliance, land-use change conflicts and coastal regulation in India. I have a Master's degree in Environment and Development and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. |
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Ravi Kumar Boyapati
I work as a Facility Coordinator at the Archives at NCBS, where I ensure the seamless operation of the facility by coordinating across departments and addressing issues vital to its function. Prior to this role, I worked as a researcher in Dr. Axel Brockmann’s Lab at NCBS, focusing on the navigational and foraging behaviours of honey bees and fruit flies, specifically exploring how these insects learn their pathways home and locate food sources.
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S. Prashant Kumar
I’m an Honorary Fellow at the Archives at NCBS, and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Rank of Instructor at the University of Chicago.
My research is about the history of time measurement, focusing on the role caste plays in organising scientific labour in South Asia. During August term 2024, I am teaching a course at NCBS introducing first-year PhD students to the history of science. As part of the Archives team, I also work on the acquisition and description of collections relating to the history of the space sciences in post-independence India. The bird’s name is Pebbles.
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Samyamee Sreevathsa
I'm currently working part-time at the Archives at NCBS, where I help manage and process Oral History Interviews. Before this, I worked on developing the sensitivity framework for the same. My academic interests lie in behavioural and community ecology, and I'm also working on a project that aims to understand how vertebrate communities in Bangalore and Delhi utilise fruiting and flowering trees.
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Sindhu Nagaraja
I work as an Archival Conservator at Archives at NCBS, where I manage the condition of the physical collection by maintaining condition reports and performing conservation treatments of deteriorated materials. Previously, I worked with the Museum of Art and Photography as a Course Anchor for training in paper conservation. Prior to this I obtained training and worked at INTACH Conservation Institute, Bangalore. Here I was part of in-situ conservation projects and worked on prominent collections like Karnataka State Museum, Roerich Collection and private collections at the lab.
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Venkat Srinivasan
I head the Archives at NCBS, with a core interest in archival processing of manuscript collections and oral history interviews. I am also a founding member of the Milli Archives Foundation, which is committed to nurturing archives in India (https://milli.link/about), and serve on the review boards for the archives at IIT Madras and ISI Kolkata, and a sub-committee of the ICA SUV. Prior to this, I worked as a research engineer at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, which is where I developed an interest in the intersection of science, its history and its presence in public discourse. My independent writing has appeared in Nautilus, Aeon, Guernica, Wire, and the Caravan.
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