
Dr Poonam Bala
Visiting Research Fellow, July - September 2022
Home Institution: Cleveland State University / UNISA (University of South Africa) Professor Extraordinarius
Poonam Bala, PhD (Commonwealth Scholar, University of Edinburgh), postdoctoral research at the Universities of London and Edinburgh, an MPhil from Jawaharlal Nehru University, is currently a Visiting Scholar at Cleveland State University (USA) and Professor Extraordinarius at UNISA (South Africa). Formerly Professor at Amity University, Faculty at the University of Delhi, Visiting Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and at 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). Recipient of several national and international fellowships, her select publications include Imperialism and Medicine in Bengal: A Socio-Historical Perspective (Sage), Medicine and Colonialism: Historical Perspectives in India and South Africa (Routledge), and Learning from Empire (Cambridge Scholars), besides other edited and authored works. She was President of the First International Conference on Ancient Greek and Indian Medicine (Greece), and Founding Member of the Asian Indian Heritage Project (Ohio). https://www.ed.ac.uk/alumni/services/profiles/graduation/1980s/poonam-bala
Project Title: Medicine, Decolonisation and Indian Voices
The indigenous elite and intellectuals in colonial India (re) created India’s medical intellectual history through western and Indian ideas of new medical understandings. Enabling a re-location of Indian medicine through institutions, patrons and clientele, the proposed project examines the (re) construction of alternative ways to acquire power, legitimacy and social mobility as contradictions and accommodation within entanglements of medicine unfolded in colonial India.