Sumangala Damodaran

Sumangala Damodaran

Sumangala Damodaran is an economist and a musician, involved in teaching and research in Economics, Development Studies and Popular Music Studies at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). She has undertaken research and documentation of the musical tradition of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) from the 1940s and 1950s, and has performed extensively from the documented repertoire. She has also collaborated with poets and musicians from South Africa in a project titled ‘Insurrections’, and is currently engaged in researching the relationship between music and migration, particularly of women in slavery and servitude across centuries and across vast tracts of the globe that were linked through long-distance trade in commodities and symbolic goods. This is a collaborative project between scholars and musicians, and several universities, in Africa and Asia.