Terracotta Sculptures of Assam

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Dr. Paromita Das is a Professor and Former Head of the Department of History, Gauhati University where she has been serving since 1997. In 1992 she joined the university as a UGC Junior Research Fellow to pursue her doctoral thesis in A Study of the Archaeological Remains in the Modern City of Guwahti. She also worked as a Lecturer in Arya Vidyapeeth College, Guwahati (1993-97). She was the first ICCR Visiting Professor in Indian Studies Chair (History) at the Mohammed V University, Rabat, Kingdom of Morocco for the last two academic years. She has to her credit two books, namely, Terracotta Sculptures of Assam (2018) and History and Archaeology of Northeast India (2007), and more than forty papers in national and international conferences. She has chaired academic sessions in conferences, as well as delivered numerous lectures, in India and abroad. She was the Journal of History and Culture (2017 & 2018) published by Gauhati University and Guest Editor of Man in India (special issue). She was co-editor of the books Heritage Northeast (2017) and Archaeological Heritage of South Asia (2019). She is also the author of Geetikavi The Poetry of Parvati Prasad Baruva (2014). She was an official nominee of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India to the SAARC regional seminar held in 2015 at Sri Lanka. She has been successfully guided 10 Ph.D. and 15 M. Phil Scholars and 8 more students are engaged in research under her supervision. Professor Das is a member of the Board of Studies of numerous universities like Cotton University, Royal Global University, Assam University, North Fastern Hill University, National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam etc. besides her parent institute Gauhati LUniversity, where she is not only a member of the Academic Council, but also served a term each as member of the university's Executive Council and Law Court. She is also a member of NCERT Textbook Review Committee in History. She is a Life Member of numerous academic bodies like Kamarupa Anusandhan Samiti (KAS) North East India History Association (NEIHA), as well as the Indian history congress of which she is member of the executive board.

As per the Memorandum of Association (MoA) prepared more than four decades ago with the set up of the ICHR, the Council has two kinds of objectives: first, to provide funding to individuals and institutions engaged in historical research and, second to undertake certain academic programmes of its own. The second type of objective the following inter alia: to provide for 'institutional arrangements for training in research methodology'; to develop 'centres for documentation and reference service on historical research'; 'to promote, accelerate and coordinate research in history with special emphasis on areas which have not received adequate attention so far.

Under these broad objectives, the ICHR has opened its three Regional Centres. I am delighted to put on record that the North Eastern Regional Centre of the ICHR in Guwahati has completed twenty four years since its foundation in 1997. The NERC started the Lecture Series Programme in 2003, and since then fifty eight lectures (including three Foundation Day Lectures) have been organised. The lecture series initiated at NERC has been fairly successful in opening a bridgehead into new areas of historical research. Therefore, the publication series emanating from the lecture scheme is to some extent a redundant exercise. To my mind it will be more appropriate to congratulate the community of historians in the north-eastern region for having made this effort on the part of ICHR meaningful and effective.