Banu Subramaniam

Early life and education Subramaniam grew up in India and received a baccalaureate degree from Stella Maris College at the University of Madras. She then attended Duke University, where she studied evolutionary plant biology, receiving a Ph.D. in evolutionary genetics. While completing her Ph.D., she also earned a graduate certificate in women's studies. In 2000, she received a National Science Foundation grant to study soil communities and their effects on invasive plant species. In 2001, she joined the department of women's studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst as an assistant professor.

She has co-edited the books Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties (2005) and Feminist Science Studies: A New Generation (2001). Ghost Stories for Darwin explores the ghosts of racism and sexism that work to place limitations on who can be a knower, how one can come to know, and what can be known. She writes at the intersection of the social and the scientific to question how we understand variation and diversity, and her work encourages disruption of binary disciplinary thinking. Her most recent book is Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (2019), which explores the interactions of religious nationalism and science in India. Holy Science includes case studies that consider the interconnections of science and religion, how they are shaped by their social contexts and structures of power, and how their aims can converge. Her current work in feminist science studies is focused on decolonizing botany by looking at post-colonial studies and biology.

Awards Subramaniam received the 2016 Society for Social Studies of Science Ludwik Fleck Prize for science and technology studies for Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity (2014). Ghost Stories for Darwin was also selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title in 2015. Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (2019) was awarded the Michelle Kendrick Prize for the best book from the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts in 2020.