User:Wikiscicomm/Sharada Srinivasan

Sharada Srinivasan (born 16 January 1966) is an archaeologist specializing in the scientific study of art, archaeology, archaemetallurgy and culture. She is associated with the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India, and an Honorary University Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. Srinivasan is also an exponent of classical Bharata Natyam dance. She was awarded India's fourth highest civilian award the Padma Shri in 2019.

Early Life and education
The younger of two siblings, Srinivasan was born on January 16, 1966 in Bangalore to M. R. Srinivasan and Geetha Srinivasan. Her father is an Indian nuclear scientist and mechanical engineer and her mother is nature conservationist and a wild life activist. Sharada received her Higher Secondary Certificate from Jai Hind College, Mumbai in 1983 and obtained her B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1987. In 1986, Sharada along with four IIT batchmates codirected, acted in and choreographed for the English feature film, Nuclear Winter which won the Cannes Award in the Special Category for 1988. The movie was produced by Homi Sethna and directed by Zul Vellani. The starcast included Vijay Crishna and Mishu Vellani. The movie was shot in the IIT Powai campus and marked the launch of a successful dance career for Sharda. After completing her master's degree at the University of London in 1989, she continued to research South Indian bronze sculptures during her PhD at University College London, which she completed in 1996.

Career
Sharada Srinivasan is a Professor in the Programme of Heritage and Society in the School of Humanities at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, India since 2012. Srinivasan started her journey as NIAS as a Fellow (2004-2006), became Assistant Professor in 2006 and served in the role till 2012.

She is first author of the book ‘India’s Legendary Wootz Steel: An advanced material of the ancient world’. Prof. Sharada Srinivasan is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and World Academy of Art and Science.

Srinivasan was awarded a Homi Bhabha Fellowship, during which time she visited the UK and USA as a visiting scholar at the Smithsonian, the Conservation Analytical Laboratory, Museum of Applied Sciences Centre for Archaeology (MASCA), University of Pennsylvania, Conservation Analytical Laboratory, Smithsonian & Conservation Department, Freer & Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian, and presented papers at a Conference on Indus Archaeology, University of Wisconsin Madison and The Cost Committee Meeting on Ion Beam analysis in Art and Archaeology at Oxford organised by European Commission.[citation needed]

She was co-recipient (with Exeter University) of a British Council funded UKEIRI research awards (2009-2011), of a Royal Society-DST award, as well as an ongoing UKIERI-II Award related to developing joint PhD. Programmes in intangible histories including archaeology and performance studies.

In 2009, Srinivasan co-chaired the seventh Beginning of the Use of Metals and Alloys (BUMA) international conference in Bangalore. The proceedings were published in 2015 in the volume Metals and Civilizations, of which Srinivasan was co-editor.

Srinivasan was co-investigator on a 2010 UK India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) funded project with Professor S. Ranganathan and the University of Exeter's Dr Gill Juleff. The project was titled Pioneering Metallurgy: Origins of Steel Making in the Southern Indian Subcontinent. She undertook further research on technical evidence for high carbon steel by ancient crucible processes and ancient high-tin Bronzes and the surviving groups in Kerala for manufacture of high-tin bronze vessels and mirrors and lost wax casting.Sharada was recently featured in this site Trowel blazers of University College London on women archaeologists.