Soumya James
Researcher and Coordinator, Science and Society Programme
National Centre for Biological Sciences
Email: sjames[at]ncbs[dot]res[dot]in 

Soumya James received her B.A. in History from Stella Maris College (Chennai), M.A. in History from the Madras Christian College (Chennai), M.Phil from Central University (Hyderabad) and PhD in Art History from Cornell University (USA). From 1998-2001, she worked as a freelance writer, publishing articles for a book, newspapers and magazines. During this time, she also worked as a middle and high school teacher at The School – Krishnamurti Foundation India (Chennai) and later as a copyeditor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies. In 2001, she joined the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University as a graduate student from where she earned her M.A. in May 2005. From June 2005 to February 2006, she carried out her dissertation fieldwork in South India, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand.

Her PhD was on the significance of goddess images at three different Angkor period sites in Cambodia, dating between the early 10th and 12th centuries C.E. Rather than treating source materials as isolable units, her dissertation explores how images, monuments, landscape, myth and performance have fluid boundaries, connecting with and informing each other, thereby profoundly influencing the significance of the feminine. Sources are probably more than mere symbols, embodying the actual political and cultural processes of the time. She works on early Southeast Asian and South Indian history, religion and art, connections between built forms and landscape, gender studies and trade networks between Southeast Asia and South Asia.