Sumangala Damodaranis an academic and musician, whose experience spans teaching and research in economics, development studies and popular music studies. She has taught in Delhi University and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi over a period of three decades, and is prsently Director, Gender and Economics with International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs). She is also a visiting professor at Ashoka University, the University of Cape Town and the Institute for Human Development, Delhi. Apart from her academic involvements as an economist and social scientist, she is also a singer and composer. Her archiving and documentation of the musical tradition of the Indian People’s Theatre Association from the 1940s and 1950s resulted in a book titled The Radical Impulse: Music and Politics in the IPTA Tradition (2017) and the album Songs of Protest. She has performed from the documented repertoire extensively in India and abroad. She has collaborated with poets and musicians from South Africa as a founder member of the award-winning Insurrections Ensemble, and has also directed a multi-institutional project around music and migration in pre-colonial AfroAsia from 2016 until the present, which has resulted in two musical productions and a book titled Maps of Sorrow: Migration and Music in the Construction of Pre-Colonial AfroAsia (2023). Read More Read Less