top of page
Dr. Anindya “Rana” Sinha

Coexistence Studies

Dr. Anindya “Rana” Sinha

Professor

asinha@tdu.edu.in, anindya.rana.sinha@gmail.com

​

Research Interests

• Distribution, demography, behavioural ecology, and life-history of Indian nonhuman primates
• Social relationships, communication, social cognition, and cultural traditions of nonhuman primates
• Cognitive evolution of tool-making abilities in nonhuman primates and hominids
• Population-, behavioural and evolutionary genetics of Indian macaques
• Demography, socioecology and evolutionary biology of Asian elephants
• Human–wildlife relationships, anthropogenic/urban ecologies, and synurbisation of nonhuman populations
• Philosophy of biology, cognition, mind, and consciousness: Western and Indian traditions
• Cognition and symbolism in Indian prehistoric and historic art and technology
• Cultural and performance studies of human and nonhuman communities

Anindya Sinha is currently Professor of Coexistence Studies in TDU and Professor of Animal Behaviour and Cognition at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore. He has earlier studied the molecular biochemistry of yeast metabolism for his doctorate at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai and subsequently, the social biology of wasps and the classical genetics of human disease at the Centre for Ecological Sciences in the Indian Institute of Science and the National Centre for Biological Sciences, both in Bangalore.

Anindya’s principal research, over more than three decades, has, however, been on the behavioural ecology, cognitive ethology, population and behavioural genetics, evolutionary biology, and conservation studies of primates and other nonhuman species, including Asian elephants and Irrawaddy dolphins. He was responsible, along with several of his colleagues, for the scientific reporting of a new species of primate, the Arunachal macaque, in northeastern India, although his principal contributions have been in understanding the structure and evolution of the nonhuman primate mind.

Anindya’s current research in the natural philosophies, urban ecologies, historical art heritage and performance studies involve etho-ethnographic explorations of other-than-human synurbisation, human–nonhuman relations and the lived experiences of nonhumans, promising unique insights into more-than-human lifeworlds – of the past, today and in the future.

bottom of page