Veena Das
Veena Das, FBA (born 1945) in India is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University. Her areas of theoretical specialisation include the anthropology of violence, social suffering, and the state. Das has received multiple international awards including the Ander Retzius Gold Medal, delivered the prestigious Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture and was named a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Education Das studied at the Indraprastha College for Women and the Delhi School of Economics at the University of Delhi and taught there from 1967 to 2000. She completed her PhD in 1970 under the supervision of M. N. Srinivas from the Delhi School of Economics. She was professor of anthropology at the New School for Social Research from 1997 to 2000, before moving to Johns Hopkins University, where she served as chair of the Department of Anthropology between 2001 and 2008. Books Her first book Structure and Cognition: Aspects of Hindu Caste and Ritual (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1977) brought the textual practices of 13th to 17th century in relation to self representation of caste groups in focus. Her identification of the structure of Hindu thought in terms of the tripartite division