Under the conversation series by eminent speakers titled ‘Crafting Careers,’ our next interaction will feature Dr Jahnavi Phalkey, historian, filmmaker and Founding Director of the Science Gallery, Bengaluru.

About the series

Crafting Careers organised by the NLS BA (Hons) programme is designed to help students navigate the world of work. Each session in the series will bring leading professionals from fields such as media, government, public policy, business, finance, and the creative arts to campus for candid conversations about their journeys. These experts will share insights and advice from their professional experiences and offer reflections on how social science majors may relate to different career pathways. These dialogues will offer students a chance to learn from diverse experiences, gain practical insights, and reflect on how to build careers that align with their own interests, skills, and values.

About the speaker

Dr. Jahnavi Phalkey is the Founding Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru, a public space for research-based engagement across the human, social, and natural sciences. Previously, Jahnavi held a tenured faculty position at King’s College London. She started her academic career at the University of Heidelberg, following which she was based at Georgia Tech-Lorraine, France, and Imperial College London. Jahnavi was Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (the Institute of Advanced Study, Berlin). She was also external curator to the Science Museum London, and has been a Scholar-in-Residence at the Deutsches Museum, Munich.

She is the author of Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth Century India (Permanent Black, 2013) and has co-edited Science of Giants: China and India in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2016). She is the producer-director of the 2020 documentary Cyclotron and was awarded the 2023 Infosys Prize in Humanities for her work on the individual, institutional, and material histories of scientific research in modern India.