Aarathi Prasad

Aarathi Prasad is a writer, broadcaster, and researcher with a PhD in molecular genetics and postgraduate training in bioarchaeology. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Global Health, UCL, focussed on urban health and public engagement with science in informal settlements in Kenya. She is also part of an international team excavating and analysing ancient DNA from funerary sites in Spain, Rome, and Pompeii. Aarathi writes about the intersection of science and technology with people, ideas, history, health, and environment. She is the author of Like a Virgin: how science is redesigning the rules of sex (Oneworld, 2012) which was translated into Dutch, Italian, and Bulgarian and was short-listed for the Salon Transmission Prize 2014; In the Bonsetter’s Waiting Room: travels through Indian medicine (Profile / Hachette, 2016) which was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and Winner of the Popular Medicine category, at the British Medical Association Awards 2017; and Silk: a history in three metamorphoses (William Collins / William Morrow), which was a sold after a five-way auction and will be published in 2023. Aarathi was also a contributing author on genomics and genetic engineering in – What’s Next? Even Scientists Can’t Predict the Future – Or Can They? (Profile, 2017), ed. Jim Al-Khalili and has written for the New York Times, Weapons of Reason, Litro, Guardian, Prospect, Wired, The Lancet, Vogue, Elle, Telegraph, and Scientific American.