Professor Damodaran is a historian of modern India, interested in sustainable development dialogues in the global South. Her work ranges from the social and political history of Bihar to the environmental history of South Asia, including using historical records to understand climate change in the Indian Ocean World. Her publications include; Broken Promises, Indian Nationalism and the Congress Party in Bihar (1992), Nature and the Orient, Essays on the Environmental History of South and South-East Asia(1998),Post Colonial India, History Politics and Culture (2000), British empire and the natural world: environmental encounters in South Asia, (2010), East India Company and the Natural world (2014) and more recently Climate change and the Humanities (2017), Geography in Britain after the second World War (2019), Commonwealth Forestry and Environmental History, Empire, Forests and Colonial environments in Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia and New Zealand (2020). She is also the author of several articles in established journals. She is particularly interested in questions of environmental change, identity and resistance in Eastern India. An experienced researcher and teacher she has an M.Phil. from JNU and a PhD from Cambridge. She is the director of the Centre for World Environmental History at Sussex. The centre is host to several research projects and a number of research associates. Dr Damodaran has had several research grants for her work from the ESRC, the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy and the AHRC. She is currently leading an AHRC network project on the botanical and meteorological history of the Indian Ocean and is working on two projects one with the McGill university and the second with Noragric. The centre collaborates actively with Kew Gardens, the British Library, the U.K. Met office and several international institutions both in India and elsewhere such as JNU, the Botanical Survey of India, Kolkata, the Indian Museum, Kolkata, the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, and McGill University, Canada and IDS, Sussex. She is engaged in building up the profile of South Asian studies and environmental history at the University of Sussex and internationally. She currently supervises 7 PhD students and is mentoring several post-doctoral scholars. She is also co-editor of the Palgrave series in World Environmental History.

Her talks and webinars include:

-August 2025, Newman college, Idduki, Kerala, Keynote,  address on Environmental History and the Curriculum

-July 2025 Climates of Empire conference, Sussex

-April, 2025 Climate, conservation and early environmental laws in the European empires, Florence

-January, 2025 Why environmental history matters? Mt Carmel college Bangalore

-November, 2024, Climate and environment in the coromandel coast, Geneva

-September, 2024, Nature as curriculum; Education for the Anthropocene, Scarborough Public Library, Tobago.

-July 2024, Situating Ammal in the history of Science in India; a decolonial perspective, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

June 2024, British Academy project workshop, Planetary health and Adivasi livelihoods, University of Westminster, London

-March 2024, 'Gender, caste, race and science; E.K. Janaki Ammal and the history of science' Kew International Science seminar, Wakehurst place
-September 2023, Mangroves and Mosquitoes, climate and environment in landscape art in British India, Yale University
-August 2023 Why Environmental history matters? Kannur University
-August 2023 Visual methodologies and climate change, Botanical Survey of India, Kolkata
-April 2023- Volcanoes, climate and history, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld, Germany
- January, 2023, Science, Humanism and the Making of Modern India, Botanical Survey of India, Kolkata
-November 2022, Future Natures in the Anthropocene in South Asia, Sussex
-October 2022, Deccolonising Adivasi studies and Indigenous histories in South Asia, Sussex
-September 2022, Global alliance of the rights of nature, Participant, Sienna, Italy
-September 2022, Delta dialogue series, Cantho university Vietnam
-August 2022 Commonwealth Forestry Dehradun
-July 2022 Keynote Portuguese conference of economic history, Coimbra University , Portugal
-July 2022 Adivasi summer school, Turin
-June 2022 Climate and History workshop, Brussels
-April 2022 What the Adivasis of Eastern India can tell us about planetary health, Edinburgh University
-March, 2022, Mangrove school project, Delta Futures project, Durham University
-March, 2022, Droughts, famines and cyclones in South Asia, Durham University
-Feb 2022, Adivasis in the Anthropocene, Max Planck Institute, Berlin
-November 2021, Ammal, Darlington and Haldane, Oxford University
-July 2021 Damodaran was also Panel discussant for SSR meeting on final plenary, aligning climate
and SDG agendas for the Evidence for Action symposium, Sussex University
-June 2021, Panel participant, Sussex Festival of Ideas, Decolonising Museums
-May 2021 Summer school organisor, Indian Ocean worlds past and present
-April 2021 Deforestation, Mining and climate change in Saranda forest, Sussex
-March, 2021- Decolonising the natural history collections at Kew Garden
-March 2021-Raising the Risk for Covid, Zoonotic episodes in South Asia, Mumbai
-December 2020-Gwilliam sisters, Climate and Environment in Madras in the eighteenth century, McGill University, Canada
- 4th November, 2020 Kalady University, Kerala, E.K. Janaki Ammal and the History of Science
- August, 2020 Phytopia, Science Gallery, Bangalore,Janaki Ammal and the Patriarchy of science
- August, 2020Mahatma Gandhi and the practice of politics, Central University of Tamilnadu
-1August, Pollen conference, Uncertainity, social transformation and climate change, Sussex
- June, 2020 Climate signals, Famines and droughts in South Asia, SOAS
- Jan, 2020 Key note lecture Indo-US bilateral symposium on climate risk and reconstruction, Mohali,India
- October 3, 2020 Key note address, Climate signals, Famine and livlihoods from 17th to 19th century India, Institute of Contemporary History, Lisbon
- June 2019, Forests, heritage and history, Manchester University
-May, 2019, Art, Activism and Environmental history, Sussex
- March, 2019, Adivasis and the Anthropocene, History seminar, Durham March 2019, Environmental history for the Anthropocene, Brighton
- January, 2019, A scientific Life, Janaki Ammal and the scientific patriarchy in Britain and India, Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge University
- November, 2018, Famine, Forests and Communities, World History seminar, Cambridge University
- October 2018 Lost species day artists workshop, invited speaker, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton
- October 2018 Project Partnership meeting, Human nature interactions in the Indian Ocean World, Ghent
- October 2018 Inaugural public lecture on 'Historical climate vulnerability' for the Centre for Environmental Humanities, Bristol University
- Sept 2018, Keynote speaker, Intersections Inaugural environmental History workshop, Institute for Historical Research, London
- Sept 2018 British society for the History of Science, outreach and education provocations, 'Science and activism, Panel member
July,2018 AHRC Natural disasters network workshop, Bristol University
- March, 2018 AHRC Natural disasters network workshop, UEA, Norwich
- December, 2017, Decolonising Indian plan collections, at Bildung conference on remediations of cultural and natural heritage, University of Copenhagen
- October 2017, invited speaker, Environmental sciences and the settler colonies, Nippising University, Canada
- October 2017, Participant, Risks, Hazards, Disasters and Culture workshop, University of Hull
- October 2017, Empire forestry, famines and communities, Imperial and Commonwealth seminar, Oxford University
- May 2017, speaker Chevening journalists symposium, Climate change and the new world order, London May 2017, speaker Chevening journalists symposium, Climate change and the new world order, London
- March, 2017, Forests, sacred groves and the environmental heritage of India, Botanical Survey of India, Kolkata
- January, 2017, Climate change and South Asian coastal cities, American University of Qatar
- October, 2016, Cambridge history of the Indian Ocean, Harvard University

Directorships and Memberships and positions:
-Expert Panel member, EU -2022-https://www.horizonteeuropa.es/sites/default/files/noticias/WebinarI_ERC_StartingGrant_2025_20240620.pdf
- Member,advisory board, Living Deltas, GCRF hub,New Castle University, 2019
- Member AHRC ODA peer review college, 2018 ongoing
- GCRF ODA lead Sussex university, 2018 ongoing
- Affiliated scholar Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge, 2018 ongoing
- Council Member, British Academy Society for South Asian Studies, 2003-2006
- Member, Association of South Asian environmental historians, 2006-University of Sussex, Senate member, 2007- 2009, 2012-Member editorial board International journal of Development and Social research
- Member, editorial board, Oecology international review of environmental history
- Member programme committee Anglo-American conference on environments 2010
- External Examiner, SOAS, University of London, 2009-2013
- Co-Editor, Book series in World Environmental History, Palgrave Director, Centre for World Environmental History,
- University of Sussex Project consultant Kew Gardens and the Natural History Museum on Indian garden drawings collections, 2009
- British Library, Endangered Archives and World Collections project,
- 2009 Natural History Museum, Wallich and Indian Natural history,
- 2011 Coordinator for Sussex MOU with BL and MET office on historical records and climate change,
- 2012 Project Consultant, Commonwealth Forest history, Forest Research Institute, Dehradhun, India
- Project consultant, National Museum, Kolkata
- 2013-2014 Academic consultant on Natural History Museum Video, Art and Empire, Images of Nature Gallery http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/art-nature-imaging/collections/india-collection/history-and-context/index.html
- Leader, climate team, Indian Ocean World Centre, Mcgill University http://indianoceanworldcentre.com/team_7
- 2016 AHRC Project head on Indian Natural History heritage exhibitions to be held in Kolkata and Mysore in October
- 2017 Project consultant, Botanical heritage of India exhibition, India International Centre, Delhi, October