Bharat Jayram Venkat, an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, has become interim director of the university’s Center for India and South Asia for fall quarter 2026, stepping into the position while the center’s director, Anna Morcom, is on sabbatical leave, UCLA International Institute announced Oct. 27.
Venkat holds joint appointments at UCLA’s Institute for Society and Genetics and its departments of history and anthropology. His research examines the intersections of science, medicine, climate, race and design.
He is also the founding director of the UCLA Heat Lab, an interdisciplinary research group investigating thermal inequality, or differences in how people experience and are affected by heat.The lab brings together students from different academic disciplines to examine the social and biological dimensions of heat exposure.
Its projects have included collecting oral histories about heat experiences in Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood and measuring occupational heat exposure among food truck workers in Westwood.
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In collaboration with UCLA’s TIE-INS Program, the lab has also developed and taught climate literacy curriculum for elementary and high school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Venkat’s research also examines the history of medicine, particularly the treatment of tuberculosis in India. His first book, “At the Limits of Cure,” was published by Duke University Press in 2021 and by Bloomsbury India in 2022.
The book uses historical research and ethnography to investigate what it means to be cured and why a cure may not always be permanent. It traces the complexities of tuberculosis treatment across different settings, including hospitals, prisons, ships, battlefields and clinical research.
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The book received three awards: the Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the RAI Wellcome Medal from the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Wellcome Trust, and the Edie Turner Book Prize for Ethnographic Writing from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology.
Venkat’s forthcoming second book turns to the history of heat and its effects on the human body. “Swelter: Our Bodies in a Warming World” is scheduled for publication in July 2027 by Crown Publishing in the United States and Picador in the United Kingdom, according to the publisher’s listing.
The book examines the history of how people have understood heat, the relationship between the human body and a warming world, and inequalities in how people experience extreme temperatures.
Venkat’s work on heat and his research on tuberculosis treatment explore different subjects but share an interest in the relationship between human bodies and the conditions in which people live.