Sujata Prasad is a former civil servant and a writer, curator, and heritage conservationist. Her interests move fluidly across fields such as community health, education, rural livelihoods, and the visual and performing arts, always seeking the spaces where disciplines intersect and spark new possibilities. She is a member of the Asia-Pacific Crafts Alliance and the founder of Ahad Anhad, a forum for creative provocation and dialogue.
Sujata has spent most of her early life on the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where her father taught international relations; her mother was a writer. She studied at St Stephen’s College and JNU in the 1970s and later took courses at the School of Public Health at Harvard University and the School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. She was also mentored by maestros like Uma Shankar Mishra and Uma Sharma.
Sujata has written across genres and disciplines: a children’s novella; an edited volume on health security; and the intimate story of a classical Indian dancer and choreographer, woven together through memoir and social history. Her most recent book is The Dream of Revolution (Penguin, 2021), a biography of Jayaprakash Narayan, alongside its annotated Hindi edition, Kranti Ka Sapna (Vani Prakashan, 2026).
Her essays are anthologised in the publications of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi – where she has served as an advisor; the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Madrid – the venue of her curated exhibition in 2025; the Museum of Sacred Art in Brussels – the venue of Threaded Memories, her ongoing exhibition; and in literary and art journals far beyond museum walls.
Beyond the arts, Sujata is an ardent advocate for animal rights and works for not-for-profit organizations working for the disadvantaged. She also contributes to cultural and policy discourse through her writing and institutional associations and is on the Institute for Human Development’s board of governors.