About:
Prof. Sachidananda Mohanty is a National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, (IIAS) Shimla. He is a Member of the University Grants Commission, (UGC), Ministry of Education, Government of India and Sri Aurobindo Chair Professor at Panjab University, Chandigarh.
He was formerly the Vice- Chancellor of the Central University of Odisha, Professor and Head of English, University of Hyderabad, (an Institution of Eminence), and Governing Board Member of Auroville Foundation, administered by the, Ministry of Education, Government of India.
He was a Member of India’s Commission of Education to the UNESCO, Consultant to the Ford Foundation, and Senior Academic Associate at the American Studies Research Centre, (ASRC), Hyderabad.
Dr Mohanty was educated at Bhubaneswar, Pondicherry, (Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education), the University of Hyderabad, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Nottingham University,U.K. University of Texas at Austin, and Yale University, New Haven, United States.
He is the recipient of several national and international awards including those from the British Council, Charles Wallace, the Salzburg, the Katha and the Fulbright. [twice].
He was the Associate Editor, Indian Journal of American Studies, and Vice-President of South India American Studies Network (SIASN). He was Fellow, Cambridge Seminar on the Contemporary British Writers, and Warwick Seminar on Literary Translation.
He was invited by the India Fulbright Commission (USIEF) to author a commemorative volume on the Fulbright Program and Educational/Cultural Exchange in India, (Foreword by Prof. J.K. Galbraith and published by Vision Books,1997).
He has won many coveted awards in translation such as the Katha Award from the President of India. and the Katha- British Council Translation Prize.
He has been a widely respected public intellectual and an active voice in leading forums including The Hindu, The Indian Express, India Today, New Quest, Economic and Political Weekly, Seminar Magazine, India International Centre Quarterly, Toronto South Asia Review, Frontline, Springer, and South Asia Review.
He has published more than 100 research articles, (many in respected and peer reviewed journals), and periodicals, especially in their magazine and literary pages.
He has lectured at some of the leading universities in India and abroad including the City University of New York, Pittsburgh University, University of New Mexico at Taos, California State University, Australian National University at Canberra, and the National University of Singapore.
He has to his credit 29 books in English and in Odia including Travel Writing and the Empire, Katha, 2000, Early Women's Writing in Orissa, 1898- 1950: A Lost Tradition; Sage Publications,2005; 2nd edition by Manohar Publications, 2024. Gender and Cultural Identity in Colonial Orissa, Orient Longman,2008; Sri Aurobindo: A Contemporary Reader, Routledge India,2008; Sarala Devi, Central Sahitya Akademi,2011; Periodical Press and Colonial Modernity: Odisha, 1866-1936, Oxford University Press, 2015; The Lost World of Sarala Devi, Oxford University Press 2016; Cosmopolitan Modernity in Early Twentieth Century India, Routledge India, 2015, Revised 2nd South Asian and Global editions 2018.
He has been an Adviser to leading Indian Universities and delivered invited and Endowment lectures at the national and international level. At Auroville, Foundation, he served as the Chair of the taskforce on Education and Governance of the unique international township.
In recognition of his pioneering research in the cultural history of Odisha, the Central Sahitya Academy organized national seminars around his book on Sailabala Das at Sailabala Women’s College, 1-2 March 2004, and on Sarala Devi during 1-2 September 2007 at Cuttack,Odisha.
Dr Mohanty’s contributions to the academic genres of travel writing, cosmopolitanism, institutional history, early women’s writing in Eastern India, and postcolonial/ cultural history of India have been widely recognized as path-breaking at the national and international level.