Dr Bishnupriya Basak, Small Study and Research Grant UK (2001-02), Research Fellow, Centre for Archaeological Studies and Training, Kolkata, to study different methods of interpreting human behaviour from archaeological artefacts, taking stone tools in the Indian context as the focus, at the Institute of Archaeology, London.
Dr. Bishnupriya Basak is Professor in the Department of Archaeology, Calcutta University.
She has been a recipient of many grants and awards, chiefly, a post-doctoral Visiting
Fellowship in the UK, awarded by the Nehru Trust for Indian Collections at the Victoria and
Albert Museum (2001), a short-term award from the Maison de l’Orient Mediterraneen Jean
Pouilloux, Lyon, France(2001), the UK Travel Award from the Nehru Trust for the Indian
Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2009), a short-term grant from Fondation
maison des sciences de l’ homme (FMSH), Paris (2009) and a research grant from Society of
Antiquaries of London (2015). She was also nominated by ICCR as a member of the Indian
delegation that visited Vietnam in 2005 and remained an Honorary Lecturer of University
College London, 2010-14.
Her specialization is in Bengal prehistory but she also researches
extensively on Archaeological theory, history of Indian archaeology and Heritage studies. She
has successfully completed four research projects in areas of her interest, including a British
Academy project entitled ‘Surveying the Empire’, with Prof. Keith Lilley of Queens University,
Belfast. Her collaborative project on ‘Tracking ancient migration routes and cultural
connections in Northeastern India’ under the UGC-UPE 2 scheme of India Looking East of the
University of Calcutta sought to relate archaeology to oral tradition and genetics in Mizoram.
She reviews papers for peer-reviewed journals like ‘Quaternary International’, ‘Studies in
History’, ‘Archaeological research in Asia’ and ‘Journal of South Asian Studies’ to name a few,
and proposals for international publishing houses like the Routledge. She has participated in
many national and international conferences in Portugal, Austria, Sweden, Ireland, Vietnam,
Cambodia and Australia, chairing a few academic sessions on these occasions. She has about
forty four published papers/chapters to her credit, as well a book, three (co) edited volumes
and published project reports including one with the University of Glasgow. She is on the
editorial board of peer-reviewed journals like Public Archaeology and reviews proposals for
esteemed organizations like the Leakey Foundation, to name a few. She was nominated as
the President of the Archaeology section of the Indian History Congress at its 81st session in
Chennai. For the past seven years she has been engaged with studying local history,
archaeology and heritage of the Sundarbans, world’s largest mangrove system, in South 24
Parganas District, West Bengal.