Sowparnika Balaswaminathan

uc san diego

Email: 
sbalaswaminathan@ucsd.edu

Biography

Sowparnika Balaswaminathan is a PhD candidate at the Department of Anthropology in the University of California, San Diego. She works with a sculptor community in India that creates bronze idols that have religious, artistic, archaeological, and commercial value, and is currently writing her dissertation. Since coming to the US in 2009, Sowparnika has seen the American university system evolve. She has vested interests in exploring the direction of the university and the status of the humanities and social sciences. Thus, she is also researching the academic and other avenues open to international students in these disciplines. Sowparnika is attempting to interrogate the position and value of the social sciences to society at large, both through her teaching and her work with Humanists@Work.