About Us
Souvik Mukherjee is associate professor in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta, India and a pioneering games studies researcher from the Indian Subcontinent. His research looks at a diversity of topics such as videogames and storytelling, videogames as colonial and postcolonial media, gaming cultures in the Indian Subcontinent and currently, Indian boardgames and their colonial avatars. Souvik is the author of three monographs, Videogames and Storytelling: Reading Games and Playing Books (Palgrave Macmillan 2015), Videogames and Postcolonialism: Empire Plays Back (Springer UK 2017) and Videogames in the Indian Subcontinent: Development, Culture(s) and Representations (Bloomsbury India 2022) and is currently working on a book project on Indian board games and colonialism titled Indian Boardgames, Colonial Avatars. He was named a ‘DiGRA Distinguished Scholar’ in 2019 by the Digital Games Research Association and a Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA) fellow in 2022. He is also an affiliated senior research fellow at the Centre of Excellence, Game Studies at the University of Tampere. His other interests are (the) Digital Humanities and Early Modern Literature. Souvik also curates a boardgame museum.
Adrija Mukherjee is research assistant in the 'Ancient Indian Boardgames: Preservation, Documentation and Cultural Impact' project at CSSSC. She holds a Masters degree in AIHC and Archaeology from Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute, Pune. She has also worked as research assistant with Immersive Trails and with the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) at the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS). She has also interned with the Indian Foundation of Arts (IFA). Her interests lie in inter disciplinary themes such as diaspora, migration, identity displacement etc in perspective of culture such as music, history, oral traditions etc. I aim on working for the vulnerable tribes of India understanding their society, economy and religious tradition from an ethnographic point of view in my themes of interest. I also enjoy preserving documents and objects, life collections of individuals and communities and everything that is fading away in this fast-pacing world in order to make research more accessible to the public. She is deeply interested in boardgame cultures and has recently presented on ganjifa cards at the Spring Seminar, Centre of Excellence in Game Cultures, Tampere University.
We have also been assisted by the following research interns: Abhyudit Manke (FLAME University), Sreeja Guha Thakurta, Sanga Pal, Subhangi Ghosh, Sneha Dutta and Tirna Sengupta (Loreto College, Kolkata). We also thank Sabita Murmu (Jharkhand), Souvik Shaw and Suman Sardar (Bishnupur College, Bankura).
This project would not have been possible without the kind support provided by the Jayaprakash Narayan National Centre of Excellence at the Indian Institute of Technology, Indore and particularly, Professor Nirmala Menon, Professor Priti Sharma and Dr Reema Choudhary.
We are also especially grateful to Professor Rosinka Chaudhuri (Director CSSSC), Dr Debarshi Sen (Registrar CSSSC), Mr Sukanta Mridha, Mr Naba Mallik and the administrative team of CSSSC. Professor Priya Sangameswaran, Dr Vibhuti Nayek and Professor Prachi Deshpande have been very helpful in many crucial aspects of the project. Professor Sangameswaran has indeed contributed a wealth of information regarding Pallanguzhi as it was played in Palakkad, Kerala.
I also thank the Deputy Director and staff of the Indian Museum for providing us valuable assistance and also Sri Raghu Dharmendra and Sri R.G. Singh of Ramsons Kreeda Pratisthana Mysuru for their support. We also thank Sri Sital Foujdar, Sri Banamali Mahapatra, SriBijay Mahapatra, Sri Prasanna Nayek, Sri Bansori Foujdar, Smt Mousumi Foujdar, Sri Padam Murmu, Dr Arunima Pati, Smt Chandrika Padmanabhan, Sri Tenzin Tobchen Bhutia, Sri Swapnesh Somaiyya and Smt. Shradhha Bhonsle for their detailed inputs.