Swati Chemburkar, an Architectural Historian, traces the spread of "Saiva Networks Across Maritime Asia" with a focus on Pasupata Saivism and the sect's involvement in the Khmer temple building in Cambodia.
Dr Anirudh Deshpande, in his talk "Forgotten Naval Histories of Early Modern India" explores the nature, scope and influence of Indian naval prowess in the early modern period and explains its local context in the Indian Ocean World.
Swati Chemburkar is an architectural historian whose work focuses on Southeast Asia, especially Cambodia. She has been part of the Southeast Asian Art Academic Programme (SAAAP) at SOAS, London University since 2016. She directed a postgraduate diploma course on Southeast Asian Art and Architecture at Jnanapravaha, Mumbai for ten years.
She is the editor of Art of Cambodia: Interactions with Cambodia, MARG, 2016. Some of her recent publications include, 'Khmer Empire and Southeast Asia (8th to 14th centuries); 'Prañāpāramitā and Khmer Esoteric Buddhism in the 10th to 13th centuries', 'Dancers, Musicians, Ascetics, and Priests: Performance- based Śaiva worship and its development in the Temple Cults of Angkor' and 'Libraries or Fire Shrines? Reinterpreting the Function of “Annex Buildings” in Khmer Śaiva Temples from Prism of Early Śaivism' with Shivani Kapoor, Andrea Acri and Olivier Cunin.
Anirudh Deshpande is Professor of Modern History, Department of History, Delhi University. He has been a Teen Murti Fellow, ICCR Guest Professor at the Vienna University, Austria, Visiting Professor at the NBU Siliguri and History Department AMU.
He has authored several books, including: The British Raj and its Indian Armed Forces, British Military Policy in India 1900-1945: Colonial Constraints and Declining Power, Class, power and consciousness in Indian cinema and television, The First Line of Defence-Glorious 50 Years of the Border Security Force, The Rise and Fall of a Brown Water Navy: Sarkhel Kanhoji Angre and Maratha Seapower on the Arabian Sea in the 17th and 18th Centuries and an edited volume of sixteen essays Social Science Perspectives and Indian Cinema.
Since 1992 he has published regularly in the EPW, IESHR, Studies in History, Social Scientist and The-Inclusive-Online and the Gordon Martel (ed.) Encyclopaedia of War and David Ludden (ed.) Oxford Online Research Encyclopaedia (2019). He has also published short stories in English and Hindi. Most of his fiction can be read on the multilingual online journal MatruBharati.