Dr Soumhya Venkatesan was awarded a Small Study and Research Grant (India) 1996-97, when a MPhil student in the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, to study and mat- and silk-weaving traditions of Pattamadai village and Kanchipuram town in Tamilnadu.
Dr Venkatesan completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2002, and is currently Professor and Head of the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, UK, where her research interests include: Craft, development and paradoxes; Freedom and the Right; Decolonisation; Philosophy in the world and worldly philosophy.