Research Fellow
Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
rayhimanshuprabha@gmail.com
Himanshu Prabha Ray held the Anneliese Maier research award of the Humboldt Foundation from 2014 to 2019. She was the first Chairperson, National Monuments Authority, Ministry of Culture, Government of India, New Delhi from 2012 to 2015. Until August 2012, she was Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, which she joined in 1980.
Her research interests include Maritime History and Archaeology of the Indian Ocean and the Archaeology of Religion in Asia. She has written extensively on both these themes, her most recent publications being Coastal Shrines and Transnational Maritime Networks across India and Southeast Asia, Routledge 2021 and an edited volume on The Archaeology of Knowledge Traditions of the Indian Ocean World, Routledge, 2021. In September 2020, Ray guest edited a Special Issue of the India Quarterly, 76.3 on ‘The Mausam Initiative’. In her 2003 publication on Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia, Cambridge University Press, Ray examined the maritime orientation of communities of the Indian subcontinent prior to European expansion.
Ray is the series editor of Routledge Archaeology and Religion in South Asia series.
A bibliography prepared under her supervision on ‘Sailing to Suvarnabhumi’ for the ASEAN – India Centre at Regional Information System for Developing Countries is online at: http://aic.ris.org.in/bibliography
