Sumangala Damodaran is an economist and a scholar of popular music studies. She is also a musician and composer who has archived and written about Indian resistance music traditions. As a development economist, her research and publications fall broadly within the rubric of industrial and labor studies, and more specifically on industrial organization, global value chains, the informal sector, labor, and migration. Apart from her academic involvements, she is also a singer and composer. Her archiving and documentation of the musical tradition of the Indian People’s Theatre Association from the 1940s and 1950s has resulted in a book titled The Radical Impulse: Music in the Tradition of the IPTA and an album titled Songs of Protest, and she has performed from the documented repertoire extensively in different parts of the country and abroad. She has also collaborated with poets and musicians from South Africa around a project titled Insurrections, which has resulted in four albums. Her recent publication Maps of Sorrow is a collaboration with poet and musician, Ari Sitas.