Dr Sudeshna Guha was awarded an India Travel Award (1995-96) when Curatorial Assistant, Indian and South-East Asian Department, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, for an ethno-archaeological survey of pastoral groups in Gujarat.
Dr. Sudeshna Guha is (2026) Professor in the Department of History and Archaeology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR.
She has held the posts of Associate Researcher at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (FAMES) at the University of Cambridge and Tagore Research Scholar at the National Museum in New Delhi. She has curated photographic collections at Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Cambridge) for over a decade, and was Temporary University Lecturer of South Asian History at FAMES for four years. She researches on the cultural histories of archaeology and photography in South Asia, and continues to study aspects of state formation, polities and urbanisation in Early India, which had led her to study archaeology and the Indus Civilisation after graduating in history.
She has written extensively on issues related to the historiography and methodology of the archaeological scholarship of Ancient India, of which an example is her edited volume The Marshall Albums: Photography and Archaeology (Alkazi Collection of Photography and Mapin, 2010). More recent publications include: Artefacts of History: Archaeology; Historiography and Indian Pasts (Sage 2015); Histories in the Making: Photographing Indian Monuments 1855-1920 (2023) and Photographing Indian Monuments 1855-1920, (2023), Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India 1855-1920 (2025).Her book, A History of India in 75 Objects, published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of India’s independence in 2022, offers a unique exploration of Indian history through carefully selected artefacts.
She has also curated a number of photographic exhibitions at the Delhi Art Gallery.