Saumya Malviya is a sociologist trained at Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics. He specialises in sociology of mathematics and science, alongside having deep and abiding interests in anthropology of religion, ethics, language, literature and philosophical anthropology. His PhD, submitted in August 2019, is titled Metaphor and Metonymy in the Constitution of Mathematical Knowledge: An Ethnographic Exploration. His work involves a study of styles in mathematics across cultural and institutional contexts in India and the relationship between biography and mathematics. Instead of being a  typical science studies work his PhD thesis is an exploration of the link between the ‘mathematical’ and the ‘ethical’ as it is exemplified in mathematical practices. 

Saumya is also a Hindi poet and his work regularly appears in Hindi literary magazines and journals.He is also committed to the idea of doing social science in vernacular and has written a short introduction to Claude Lévi Strauss’s anthropology in Hindi. 

Saumya studied mathematics at University of Delhi as an undergraduate and shifted to sociology for postgraduate studies from the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics (MA, MPhil and PhD). His Mphil dissertation was a study of the role of the nature/culture opposition in Claude Lévi Strauss’s structural anthropology. He continues to read and reflect on the history of anthropology in the 20th century, with a special focus on the French tradition. 

Saumya has close to five years of experience as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at various colleges in University of Delhi and prizes his experience of working with his students, above all. He is fundamentally committed to the idea that teaching and research go hand in hand and are often mutually constitutive of each other. 

Saumya is currently working towards an archaeology of modern mathematics and a sociological and philosophical study of the Navgeet movement in Hindi literature.

Saumya’s research interests include:

• Sociology and Philosophy of Mathematical Practices
• Sociology of Science 
• Sociology of Religion and Kinship
• Anthropology of Ethics
• Anthropology of Texts and Literature
• Philosophical Anthropology
• Philosophy of the ‘Social’

Through his various research interests Saumya is trying to understand the relationship between ethics and mathematical/scientific/literary thought and to locate the ‘social’ within various knowledge producing and creative practices. Further, he is also interested in exploring the influence of modernity on the professionalisation and institutionalisation of disciplines like mathematics, sociology etc and in exploring the trajectories of particular mathematical and sociological traditions. 

• Malviya, Saumya. 2017. ‘Heidegger’s Critique of Humanism and some Lessons for Social Sciences. The New Leam. Vol 3(24): 8-14
• Malviya, Saumya. 2017. ‘Claude Lévi Strauss: Ek Aranyak Bechaini’. Pakhi. Vol 8(5): 5-14
• Malviya, Saumya. 2018. ‘Language Use in Mathematics: An Ethnographic Exploration’. Society and Culture in South Asia. Vol 4(2): 208-232
• Malviya, Saumya. 2019. ‘Symbol as  Metaphor and Metonymy: A Sociological Perspective on Mathematical Symbolism’. Science, Technology and Society. Vol 24(1): 53-72
• Malviya, Saumya. 2019. ‘Gandhi, Gita aur Ahimsa’. https://www.newsplatform.in/article/gandhi-gita-ahinsa/
• Translation - Paniker, K Ayyappa. 2019. Sadanira:Sanskritiyon ke Mel Par Kuch Vichaar. Sambhav Prakashan: kaithal, Haryana. 

Working on a monograph titled Metaphor and Metonymy in the Constitution of Mathematical Knowledge: An Ethnographic Exploration based on his PhD and several journal articles are currently under review.

Previously at University of Delhi

• Sociological Theories-I & II
• Sociology of Kinship
• Sociology of Religion
• Economic Sociology
• Visual Culture
• Research Methods- I & II etc.

Currently teaching at Ahmedabad University

• Anthropology of Texts and Literature
• Poetry: Poetry Collection Ghar Ek Namumkin Jagah Hai to be published soon.