Visiting Scholar - Poonam Bala

Poonam Bala 
Email: p.bala@csuohio.edu

Professor Poonam Bala, Ph.D. (Sociology, Commonwealth Scholar), University of Edinburgh (UK), did postdoctoral research at the Wellcome Institute/SOAS, UCL (London), and at the University of Edinburgh, and an M.Phil. from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Recently appointed as Professor Extraordinarius at UNISA (South Africa), formerly Professor at Amity University, Reader/Faculty at the Delhi School of Economics (University of Delhi), Visiting Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and at academic institutions in South Africa, Germany, Canada and Greece, she has lectured at Harvard University, University of Queensland and delivered the Distinguished Dr. Upendranath Brahmachari Endowment Lecture (India). She recently delivered the Key Note address at the first International Seminar on Medicine and Society in Colonial Bengal (India), and was President of the First International Conference on Ancient Greek and Indian Medicine, Greece. Recipient of several national and international fellowships, including a recent Visiting Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh (UK), she is the author of Imperialism and Medicine in Bengal: A Socio-Historical Perspective (Sage), besides several edited and authored books/research articles. Her most recent publication is Music, Health and the Body: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Lexington Books/Bloomsbury Publishing), and also (ed.with R.Viljoen) Epidemic Encounters, Communities and Practices in the Colonial World (Lexington). Her select publications include Medicine and Colonialism: Historical Perspectives in India and South Africa (Routledge), Biomedicine as a Contested Site: Some Revelations in Imperial Contexts (Lexington), Learning from Empire (Cambridge Scholars), and Contesting Colonial Authority: Medicine and Indigenous Responses in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century India (Lexington), amongst others. Her current projects include travel writings, and arts and aesthetics. She was President (with M.Karamanou) of the First International Conference on Ancient Greek and Indian Medicine (Greece), and Founding Member of the Asian Indian Heritage Project (Ohio), has been on the Editorial Board of the Ancient Science of Life, on the Editorial/Reviewers’ Board of the Athens Journal of Health, and Academic Member of Athens Journal of History.