Banu Subramaniam

Professor Banu Subramaniam is a leading scholar in Feminist Science Studies and an affiliated member of the DFG Research Training Group 2686 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds a BSc from the University of Madras and a PhD in Zoology and Genetics from Duke University. Her research examines the intersections of science, colonialism, gender, race, and caste, with a focus on decolonizing scientific narratives and rethinking botanical practices through postcolonial frameworks.

• Recipient of the Chancellor’s Medal (2016), highest faculty honor at UMass Amherst
• Delivered the Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series (2016)
• Co-edited MEAT! A Transnational Analysis (Duke UP, 2023)

Her seminal work Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (2019) critiques the entanglement of science and religious nationalism in India, while Ghost Stories for Darwin (2014) reimagines evolutionary science through feminist and postcolonial lenses. Subramaniam’s interdisciplinary approach bridges the humanities and natural sciences, emphasizing the sociopolitical dimensions of knowledge production.