School of Humanities

Ganesh V. Shivaswamy is a lawyer from Bengaluru. His grand-father was Justice A. R. Somnath Iyer who was the Chief Justice of the High Court of Karnataka and the Acting Governor of Karnataka briefly in 1969. In addition to his profession, Ganesh has taken up the task of structuring the artistic legacy of Raja Ravi Varma.

In 2019 he established the Ganesh Shivaswamy Foundation, which immediately thereafter partnered with Google Arts and Culture. The platform was launched by Her Highness Shubhangini Raje, Rajamata Ji of Baroda in September of that year. In 2020, the Foundation showcased the largest collaborative exhibition of the artist’s work to celebrate 150 years since the commencement of Ravi Varma’s career.

Ganesh continues his research on Raja Ravi Varma and is the author of a six-volume book series, Raja Ravi Varma: An Everlasting Imprint which explores the social, religious and aesthetic impact of Ravi Varma’s images on the people of the Indian sub-continent and beyond. A team from the Critical Collective, New Delhi consisting of Gayatri Sinha, Mrinalini Vasudevan and Namrata Ghosh edited the books.

In March 2021, Ganesh was appointed the honorary curator of the new wing of the Sree Chitra Art Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram which is specifically dedicated to the works of Ravi Varma and associated artists. The new wing of the Sree Chitra Art Gallery was inaugurated on September 25, 2023 by the Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan. He is also the honorary curator of the museum at the Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village, Manipal.

Ganesh has extensively spoken on the artist’s legacy for the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru; the Sir C. P. Ramaswamy Aiyer Art Foundation; Bangalore International Center; IGNCA, and Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Vadodara among others.

He seeks to explore the dynamics of inter-disciplinary learning as he has worked extensively in the fields of litigation and art academia.

I am a cognitive scientist with research experience since 2014, starting with a master's in Cognitive Science from the Centre of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Allahabad. I have a bachelor's in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Anna University, Chennai. I also engage in AI ethics research (accidentally!)

I have held research positions at IIT Kanpur, NIMHANS (Bengaluru), and New York University Abu Dhabi. My interdisciplinary research spans computational modeling, machine (deep) learning, visual perception, and cognitive neuroscience, with projects in the areas of visual scene perception, emotional scene processing, visual word recognition, corpus-based psycholinguistics, computational psychiatry, dementia research, and behavioural game theory. 

I am passionate about understanding brain algorithms and exploring the missing links between the top-down and bottom-up approaches to computation. I'm also intrigued by how advanced technologies can mimic and augment human cognitive processes. This raises profound questions about what it means to be human, the nature of self, agency, and consciousness.

I have taught courses on cognitive processes (basic & advanced) at IIT Kanpur and served as a TA for the Neuromatch Academy’s Deep Learning and NeuroAI summer courses for two years, and also taught the Cognitive Science & Research course as a visiting faculty (Strate School of Design).