Dr Jahnavi Phalkey
Senior Lecturer in History of Science and Technology
Email: jahnavi.phalkey@kcl.ac.uk
Room: 7B, Chesham building, Strand campus
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7848 7052
Office Hours (2016-17): Mondays 12:15-14:15 (by appointment)
Jahnavi Phalkey is a historian of contemporary and twentieth century science and technology based at the India Institute, King’s College London. She holds a doctoral degree in history of science and technology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Before moving to King’s, Jahnavi was Junior Research Fellow at the Imperial College London.
She was recently Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin following which she was on secondment as external curator to the Science Museum London. Jahnavi is on the editorial board for the British Journal for the History of Science, and the Indian Journal for the History of Science.
Research
Jahnavi specializes in history of the modern physical sciences and the history of statistics where they intersect with transformations on the Indian subcontinent. Her work explores, questions concerning science and the state, science and democracy, and international history, at the level of laboratory and field practice.
She is the author of Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth Century India (2013). Most recently, she co-edited , Science of Giants: China and India in the Twentieth Century, inaugural volume of the British Journal for the History of Science - Themes having steered a four year collaboration between historians of China and India. Earlier, she led the publication of a Focus Section on Science, History and Modern India in the leading history of science journal Isis.
At present, Jahnavi is Principal Investigator on two collaborations: As part of the Max Weber Foundation funded Transnational Research Group on Poverty and Education in India (2012-17), she leads a project on Technical Solutions to Mass Education in Contemporary India. She is launching a series of three workshops and residencies to address questions on Science and Democracy funded by the Indian European Advanced Research Network (2016-18).
Jahnavi is director of the documentary film cyclotron.