By Sheen Atwa
Renny Thomas will join the NYU Gallatin community as the Taki Visiting Global Professor for the Spring 2025 semester. Hailing from India, Professor Thomas is a sociologist, social anthropologist, and author with expertise in science and technology studies (STS) and the anthropology of religion. He has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in scientific laboratories across Bangalore, Trivandrum, and Delhi, and is currently based in Bhopal, India, where he is doing research in Unani hospitals. In addition to his fieldwork, Renny serves as an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER). During his time at Gallatin, Professor Thomas will teach “Comparative Science and Religion: South Asia and the West“ and host a thought-provoking dialogue event, “Studying Science and Religion: Beyond the West”.
Sheen Atwa (Administrative Aide II for Global Programs & Faculty Services): Could you tell me a little bit about yourself?
Renny Thomas: I’m an anthropologist of science. Basically, my work is broadly within the field of science and technology studies (STS), but I’m also interested in the social history of science, and anthropology of religion. My work explores questions around science, religion, and modernity, and how these categories work specifically in the Indian context. That’s what my first book, which was titled Science and Religion in India: Beyond Disenchantment, explores. It is an ethnographic exercise in understanding these categories in the Indian context. I write about the specificity of the debates on science and religion in the Indian context, or rather, non-western contexts. I wanted to understand these questions as an anthropologist by employing ethnographic research methods. By being part of a laboratory, I wanted to understand how religion works specifically in scientific laboratories.
Sheen Atwa: Great. You are currently a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Bhopal, so could you talk about what you do there and your experiences?
Renny: Alright. I joined IISER in 2021. Prior to that, I taught Sociology at the University of Delhi for almost 6 years. At IISER, I teach courses in science and technology studies and anthropology of religion, mostly to students of natural sciences and engineering. IISER is an institution of national importance, of the Government of India, and it integrates teaching and research. Research is a major component of the IISER system. At IISER, I also supervise PhD candidates and my current PhD students work on three major themes, 1) science and technology in postcolonial India, 2) anthropology of Islam, 3) anthropology of cultural nationalism.
Sheen Atwa: Where does your work fit into the current discourse, in the fields of sociology, anthropology, or science studies?
Renny Thomas: I try to locate my published work and research within the larger tradition of science and technology studies. Especially when we look at questions around sciences and scientific laboratories, where do we locate religion, for example? Religion is seen as an outsider to the scientific world. But you know, scholarship in STS, and religious studies reveals that’s not the case. So, my work is within the tradition of science and technology studies and anthropology of religion, where I look for religion in what I call non-sites of religion, such as laboratories. I approach these questions through laboratory ethnography. How do scientists actually practice science differently in different locations? Does religion really affect the way they do science? And whether culture matters, whether institutional culture matters, whether religious traditions matters?, and how do they negotiate these different forms of life? Being a scientist, but also being a religious person?
Sheen Atwa: What about Gallatin and the Taki Global Visiting Professor position attracted you?
Renny: Well, first of all, the kind of interdisciplinarity that is very unique to Gallatin, that attracted me. And some of the scholars that I have been following actually, for many years are based in Gallatin. Matthew Stanley is a scholar that I started reading years ago. So, his work is influential and very important in my own thinking and writing. I also teach his work to my students at IISER Bhopal. Also, the anthropologist of science, Sophia Roosth, whose work is really fascinating, and scholars who work on South Asia, especially Ritty Lukose, and various others. So, the kind of interdisciplinarity that Gallatin offers, and also the freedom it offers in terms of teaching which I thought was very fascinating, because I will have students from different backgrounds, different disciplinary backgrounds: sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. That’s, of course, a major attraction. In that sense, I think my stay will be intellectually productive in terms of conversations because of the research questions I am currently working on: on science and autobiographies, biology and postcolonialism, social justice, among others. So, I think it will be useful to have these interdisciplinary scholars as my colleagues. For that reason, I was delighted to be invited as the Taki Visiting Global Professor at Gallatin.
Sheen Atwa: You’ve taught courses at multiple universities covering topics such as social anthropology and ethnographic research, exploring, as you say, how “science-medicine-society interacts, negotiates, and co-produce modern institutions and disciplines.” Can you describe your teaching philosophy? How do you choose what to teach? How do you create a course that’s both engaging and meaningful?
Renny: It changes from place to place. As I mentioned, before I came to IISER, I was in a predominantly social science university, where I was teaching only students of social sciences, mostly sociology students. But once I shifted to IISER, I had to change my pedagogy since I was going to teach students of natural sciences and engineering. The students were taking a course in social sciences for the first time in their training in the BS-MS program.They never had an exposure in any serious social science courses prior to this since science teaching in India mostly is devoid of social sciences and humanities training in the curriculum. I was teaching an STS course and I needed to first introduce what STS is and what this discipline of anthropology is all about. I had to start from the scratch! So, my methodology of teaching is essentially about offering them another way of looking at their own disciplines, be it physics, chemistry, or whatever natural sciences they do, and then, at the end of the course invite them to be a bit more critical of their own disciplines through the debates in STS, history of science, and anthropology of science.
This will help me when I start teaching at Gallatin since there will be students from both sciences and social sciences. Social science students would also be entering into a different world of understanding these debates, and the science students would also be looking at these questions very differently by looking at the histories of these debates and how STS scholars have dealt with questions around method, scientific controversies, science and religion, among others. It will be genuinely interdisciplinary in that sense. What I also envision is to have conversations between the science students and social science students in their class exercises.
Sheen Atwa: Yeah, I think that’s a great idea about what defines Gallatin. So, you’re hosting an event in spring semester 2025 called, “Studying Science and Religion: Beyond the West.” How did you come up with that title? And what information do you hope people will walk away with after attending?
Renny Thomas: Well, that’s based on my own reading of the larger debates on science and religion, because when we look at the literature on science and religion, it still is predominantly very West-centric and the debates are mostly about North America and Europe. Very rarely, we talk about the non-Western discourse on how these categories actually work. So, by this particular title, what I want is to invite people to think about the other worlds of science and religion. How it exists differently in different places, how it exists, for example, in India. Now, I’m not saying that it works very differently in this place, but actually, by looking at the specific experience of the Indian case, one can also understand the West. It helps us understand, for example, the global histories of science and religion. So, it aims to understand the specificities and differences, but at the same time also to make sense of the connectedness and shared experiences. And also, when you discuss science and religion in South Asia, especially India, the discussion is mostly about Science and Hinduism. How about Science and Islam in India? Science and Christianity in India? Science and Buddhism in India? So, in a way, I would like the audience to also think about India beyond Hinduism.
Sheen Atwa: Do you have any words of advice for Gallatin students who are looking forward to taking your course?
Renny Thomas: I really welcome students who would like to know more about how the categories of religion and science work differently in different sites. And I invite students to seriously engage with the conceptual and methodological questions of studying ‘science and religion’. The course is an interdisciplinary exercise, where they’ll be reading materials from anthropology, history, STS, and religious studies. I am eagerly waiting to meet the Gallatin students soon. Thank you.
Sheen Atwa: Thank you, Renny.