Workshop on Doing History of Science and Engineering in India
A social history perspective
A two-day workshop on the social histories of science, mathematics, engineering, medicine, computing, and allied knowledge practices in India.
Schedule
Day 1
February 23, 2026
Registration
Welcome Address
Prof Madhumita Sengupta
Humanities and Social Sciences, IITGN
Welcome Address
Prof Vinod Chandra
Physics, HoD of HSS
Address
Prof Vimal Misra
Civil Engineering, Dean R&D
Address
Prof Neeldhara Mishra
Computer Science and Engineering, IITGN; HoMI Coordinator and Co-organiser
Tea Break
Why Study History of Science?
Prof Deepak Kumar
Retd Professor of the History of Science and Education, JNU
A Perspective on Mathematics in the Sulbasutras
Prof SG Dani
Retd Professor, TIFR, Mumbai; currently with DAE-CEBS, Mumbai
History of Computing, with Interesting (Social) Bits from Far and Near
Prof K Gopinath
Retd Professor, IISc Bangalore; currently Professor at Rishihood University and Guest Professor at IITGN
Lunch
Notes on a Historic Floorplan: A Fragmentary History of British India's First Purpose-Built Chemistry Lab
Prof Madhumita Mazumdar
The Contested Terrain of Electrification in Colonial Calcutta
Prof Suvobrata Sarkar
The Extraordinary Career of M Visvesvaraya
Prof Aparajith Ramnath
Tea Break
Coding the Nation: A Genealogy of Computing as a Practice in India
Aditya Kumar Pandey
Derailing Guard? A Global History of Check-Rails
Tilak Bhardwaj
Science at the Edge of an Empire
Anup Sharma
Electrifying a Company Town
Harsh Kumar
Day 2
February 24, 2026
Tea Break
Relationship Between Diseases and Society: A Bioarchaeological Perspective
Prof Veena Mushrif-Tripathy
Oral Healthcare and Public Health: Twentieth Century Bengal
Prof Sahara Ahmed
Girindrasekhar Bose and Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis and the Social History of Science
Prof Arka Chattopadhyay
Colonial Epidemiology: Insights from Assam
Prof Madhumita Sengupta
Lunch
Genesis of Zero in Ancient India
Prof Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay
A Historical Overview of Gravitational Physics in India
Prof Sudipta Sarkar
Tea Break
Tracing the Historicity of the Water Management System in Ancient India
Dr Shikha Rai
River Drought Forcing of the Harappan Metamorphosis
Hiren Solanki
Spaces of Healing and Control: Colonial Medical Institutions in the Madras Presidency
Abin Joshy V
Laughing Out Science: A Social History of Satirical Literature and Science in Nineteenth-Century Bengal
Anamika Panda
Negotiating the Native Mind: A Social History of Psychoanalysis in India (1922-1950)
Ruchi Sharma
Vote of Thanks
Overview
This workshop brings together historians, scientists, engineers, and scholars of society to examine how scientific and technical knowledge has been produced, taught, circulated, and contested in India.
The two days move across mathematics, medicine, computing, engineering, public health, colonial institutions, pedagogy, and local practices. The format combines plenary talks, focused research presentations, and conversations across disciplinary boundaries.
A shared emphasis is on social history: the institutions, publics, materials, infrastructures, and political settings that shape what counts as science and engineering, and how those histories are remembered.