Professor Ranu Roychoduhuri is a scholar of modern and contemporary art in South Asia, focusing on photography, print history, intellectual histories of art, art historiography, and postcolonial studies. She has published in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes, and art magazines and her research has been supported by national and international institutions. She curated shows for private and public institutions and taught in the US and Indian higher education institutions. Her scholarship, teaching, and curatorial practices focus on entangled histories of visual aesthetics, photographic techno-materiality, intellectual commitments, and political processes in modern South Asia and foreground the historical interconnectedness of visual cultures that exemplify cosmopolitan artistic practices.

Professor Roychoduhuri received her PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago and began her professional career at Nalanda University. Subsequently, she joined the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati before joining Ahmedabad University. During her tenure at the IITG, she spent an academic year as Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer at Yale University.
 

Peer-reviewed journal articles 

• Ranu Roychoudhuri, “Photographs of People, Monument for a City” in a special issue, titled “Discovery of India(s): Resisting the National Biography,” of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 41(3) 658–680 (2018). DOI: 10.1080/00856401.2018.1488514  
• Ranu Roychoudhuri, “Documentary Photography, Decolonization, and the Making of ‘Secular Icons’: Reading Sunil Janah’s Photographs from the 1940s through the 1950s,” Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, 8(1) 46– 80 (2017). DOI: 10.1177/0974927617717898

Chapters in Edited Volumes

• Ranu Roychoudhuri, "Intermediality and Cosmopolitanism: Photography and Activism in Postcolonial Calcutta," in Points of View: Defining Moments in Photography in India, edited by Gayatri Sinha (New Delhi: Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, 2022) ​​​​​
• Ranu Roychoudhuri, "Photographing Jamshedpur's Industrialscape in a Nehruvian India," in Jamshedpur: 100 Years and Counting (Mumbai: Tata Steel and The Marg Foundation, 2020). 

Scholarly Articles in Magazines

• Ranu Roychoudhuri, “The Jesuits, the Leftists, and the Genre of Documentary Photography in Late-Twentieth Century Calcutta,” Take on Art: Quarantine, Issue 26, Vol 3 (April 2021) 
• রাণু রায়চৌধুরী, “কলকাতার দৈনিকপত্রে আলোকচিত্র: ১৯২০-১৯৪০,” (In Bangla; trans. Photographs in Calcutta Newspapers 1920–40), Harappa: Likhan O Chitran, edited by Saikat Mukherjee (Sep 2019), 173—178.

Book/Exhibition reviews

• Ranu Roychoudhuri, “The Street and the Gallery: Shahidul Alam’s Archives of Practices,” review of the retrospective show Singed But Not Burnt (Emami Art, Kolkata, 19 June–20 August, 2022), Take on Art: Memory, Issue 28 (December 2022), 137-139.
• Ranu Roychoudhuri, “The Art of Witnessing: Sunil Janah and India’s Industrial Modernization,” review of the exhibition Sunil Janah/Making a Photograph (Experimenter—Ballygunge Place, Kolkata, on view Feb 03—Mar 26, 2022), Critical Collective, February 202
• Ranu Roychoudhuri, “Celluloid Histories and Futures: Art Cinema in India,” review of Rochona Majumdar’s Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021), Critical Collective, December
• Ranu Roychoudhuri, “Looking through the Portal: Photographs, Lives, Histories,” review of Portal: The Curious Case of Achintya Bose (2020), Critical Collective, November 2021. https://criticalcollective.in/NoticeboardInner.aspx?Id=454
• Ranu Roychoudhuri, Review article: Chandak Sengoopta’s The Rays Before Satyajit: Creativity and Modernity in Colonial India (2016) in South Asian History and Culture (2018). DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2018.1535559

Reflections

• Ranu Roychoudhuri, “People, Moments, Lives: Portraits by Sanjeet Chowdhury,” Art & Deal, Issue.157 – 158, 18: 124 -125 (May – June 2022), 50.
• Ranu Roychoudhuri, “Looking at Matsya—35 mm,” Art & Deal, Issue.155 – 156, 18: 122 -123 (March - April 2022), 48. 

At Ahmedabad University, Professor Roychoudhuri is part of the faculty team developing the Dual-Degree Programme in Integrated Arts and teaches courses across her areas of research interest. 

Courses: 

PVA101 Exploring Studio Art (Co-taught)

PVA220 Archives of Artistic Practices in Modern South Asia

PVA222 Seeing Photographs 

2021    Bethune College, University of Calcutta — Uttara Chakrabarty Memorial Lecture 
            Lecture title: Of People and Smoke: Industrialscape in Post-Independence India 
2020    Yale ISM Fellows Luncheon Series
             Lecture title: “Development Communication”: Catholic Theology and Documentary Photography in Post-Emergency Calcutta
2018    Ashoka University, Department of Visual Arts 
            Lecture title: Camera and Cosmopolitanism: Notes from South Asia
2017    University of Dayton, Department of History and Department of Art and Design
            Lecture title: Documentary Photography in Twentieth Century South Asia
2016    Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
            Lecture title: An Art for Society’s Sake: Documentary Photography, Iconoclasm, and the Making of “People of Calcutta” 
2016    The Asiatic Society, Kolkata 
            Lecture title: Photography and the Vernacular Press in Early-Twentieth Century Bengal
2016    Wright State University, Department of History  
            Lecture title: Documentary Photography, Decolonization, and the Making of “Secular Icons” 
 

2021     Shergil-Sundaram Arts Foundation 
             Panelist for book discussion on Portal: The Curious Account of Achintya Bose by Shan Bhattacharya
             https://ssaf.in/ssaf_programmes/2021-book-discussion-portal-the-curious-account-of-achintya-bose/
2021    The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art 
            Reading workshop on Image/Object/Affect: Circuits of Seeing 
            https://ficart.org/imageobjectaffect
2021    Alkazi Foundation for the Arts 
            Interviewed for their ongoing project on Photography and Magazine in India
            https://alkazifoundation.org/photography-and-the-magazine-in-india-11/
2020    Yale Institute of Sacred Music
            Speaker for the virtual series “Voices from the Quarantine” 
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOWvIkG1aXI&t=150s
2020     The Macmillan Center, Yale University 
             Speaker for their online series “Macmillan Report” 
             https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECcb8wzXl6A
2019     Lead speaker on a panel discussion on “Lives of Labour in the City” as part of The City in the Archives - Part II at the Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta               (CSSSC)
2018     Fourth Pillar: India Journalism Week organized by The University of Chicago Center in Delhi
             Panelist in a Roundtable Discussion on Art and Politics & commentator during film screening and discussion 
2017     Victoria Memorial Hall in Association with Goethe Institute / Max Mueller Bhavan and Jadavpur University – 1st Jadavpur University Photo Fest 2017 
              Panelist in a Roundtable Discussion on Art as Archive 
2016     Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago 
             Gallery Talk on Documentary Photography: Telling Real Stories