Thamarai Selvan Kannan

Thamarai Selvan K is a PhD student from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT), Chennai, India and studied for an MA in Education at Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India. He works under Prof. Roland Wittje for his doctoral research. Thamarai’s interests are in the areas of history of science, technology, craft, and education. His current research work is on musical instrument making in colonial and post-colonial South India, where he studies the knowledge and pedagogy of craftspeople regarding instruments, material, sound, and their interactions with scientists, musicians, and other actors. Thamarai has published his work in SHOT’s Technology’s Stories and presented at various academic conferences and workshops, such as the Republic of Plants conference, IIT Madras (December 2019), SHOT-ECIG online Graduate Workshop (2020), and the Sound Instruments and Sonic Cultures online conference by the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, UK (December 2020). He is co-organizing the upcoming SHOT-ECIG Graduate Workshop in New Orleans (November 2021).