Sujata Patel is National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. Earlier she taught sociology at the Universities of Hyderabad and Pune and SNDT Women’s University. An historical sensibility and a combination of four perspectives-Marxism, feminism, spatial studies and post structuralism influences her work which covers diverse areas such as modernity and social theory, history of sociology/social sciences, city-formation, social movements, gender construction, reservation, quota politics and caste and class formations in India.

Vijaya Shankar Varma, National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy of Science, Ambedkar University Delhi. He is working on a translation and commentary on the 9^th c. manuscript in the collection of the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, Patna titled “Treatise on the Sun’s Rays” by the Arab philosopher-scientist Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi.