Ashmolean Museum’s Shailendra Bhandare to deliver Brahmanand Deshpande Memorial Lecture on Wednesday

Dr Shailendra Bhandare, curator of South Asian and Far-eastern Coins and Paper Money at Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, will deliver the Brahmanand Deshpande Memorial Lecture on Wednesday at Savitribai Phule Pune University on Wednesday. The lecture is titled ‘Deccan During the Yadav Era – Numismatic Survey’ and will be delivered from 3 to 5 pm at the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Hall in the university’s history department. The lecture is being organised by the Interdisciplinary School (I.D.S.) (Humanities and Social Sciences) and the History Department at SPPU.

Numismatics is the study or collection of coins, tokens, paper money, and related items. Bhandare’s research contributions range from 500BC to the present. He is especially interested in Ancient India (500BC-AD500) and pre-Modern India (AD1500-1900) and is currently working on the unofficial copper coinages in pre-Modern India. Bhandare holds a Masters degree in History and a Doctorate in Ancient Indian Culture awarded by the University of Mumbai.

He started his career as a numismatist with a visiting fellowship at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge and later worked as a curator of coins at the British Museum relating to coins of Later Mughals and the Indian Princely States.

Professor Shraddha Kumbojhkar, Head of Department of the history department at SPPU, said, “The lecture is about the history of Deccan based on numismatics sources. Shailendra is an numismatics expert and he will be talking about the era of Yadavs in the Deccan region, which is the 11th and 12th century. Deshpande was a historian of ancient and medieval Maharashtra. The lecture is conducted through an endowment by his son Ambarish Deshpande. ”

Previously, the lecture has been delivered by academics like Professor Emeritus of Indian History and Culture at the University of Oxford Rosalind O’Hanlon, Professor of Colonial Urban History at University of Leicester Prashant Kidambi, and retired IIT Bombay Professor Milind Malshe.