Thamarai Selvan Kannan

Dr. Thamarai Selvan Kannan is a researcher in humanities and social sciences, working at the intersections of history of science and technology, material culture, educational studies and postcolonial studies, with a focus on South Asia. He completed his PhD from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Madras; his dissertation examined the sociocultural, economic, and technological histories of musical instrument making in twentieth- and twenty-first-century South India. During his time at the Institute he was a "First Research Article" Fellow studying the knowledge and pedagogy of craftspeople regarding instruments, material, sound, and their interactions with scientists, musicians, and other actors in colonial and postcolonial South India. His current research engages with experiential knowledge, crafts, tradition, transmission, training, innovations, more-than-human actors (plants and animals) and technological materiality. The sources used go beyond archival sources and official records, drawing on museum objects, materials, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork.