Aishwarya Ramachandran
Biographic Data
| ID | 3721591 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aishwarya Ramachandran |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aishwarya |
| FAMILY NAME | Ramachandran |
| SIGNATURE | RAMACHANDRAN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of British Columbia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1590-741X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
“That new breed of medical aide, the physiotherapist, was slightly suspect. At least they can’t do any harm was a prevalent attitude”
In exploring the early path to the professionalization of physiotherapy in the province of British Columbia from the 1920s to 1960s, the authors aim to shed light on the shaping of professional health care regulations at a formative moment in Canadian history. The return of Canadian veterans suffering from devastating war injuries following the Second World War, in addition to serious civilian outbreaks of poliomyelitis, precipitated demands for …
Training the algorithm
Research on women’s body image has often focused on the potential harms associated with engaging with health and fitness content on Instagram. Recently, scholars have turned their attention to exploring women’s agency in relation to social media to examine how particular groups of individuals participate in the curation of their online worlds in pursuit of a positive body image. In particular, we consider the experiences of specific racial groups…
Energy literacy
Energy literacy is a developing field of research and practice that provides a comprehensive way of understanding how energy functions in the universe, on the earth, and in our social and personal lives. This literature review, building on an increasing momentum of research across various disciplines, outlines current energy literacy scholarship focused on a range of educational contexts (i.e., K-12, higher and post-secondary, teacher education a…
Transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary programmes for collaborative graduate research training
This paper documents a case study examining collaborative transdisciplinary (TD) and interdisciplinary (ID) graduate programmes at the University of British Columbia (a large, public, research-intensive university in Canada) – serving as a model for other universities globally. TD and ID programmes in higher education can ultimately create a new generation of researchers who are capable of contending with complex problems by equipping them with a…
Using a Mixed-Methods Approach to Examine the Expanding Reach of Body Classification into the Twenty-First Century
This article uses a mixed-methods approach combining historical inquiry and quantitative science mapping techniques to examine the expanding reach of the somatotype body measurement and classification system, based on posture photography and anthropometric measurements, well into the twenty-first century. It illuminates the persistence of deterministic thinking about the relationships between physique and athletic ability in physical education an…
One size fits all
The categories we use to make sense of a place are never neutral. Scientific classifications can maintain ignorance about some aspects of a landscape, even as they create knowledge about others. This article considers this in the context of Ethiopia's Bale Mountains National Park, a landscape whose hydrologic and socio-cultural characteristics have been made inscrutable through the convergence of imperial legacies, processes of knowledge producti…
Incorporating equity, diversity, and inclusion in science
Questions of equity, diversity, and inclusion in the sciences have taken center stage in light of the COVID‐19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement of 2020. This paper focuses on the experiences of academics engaging in such work, particularly in their roles as educators, by sharing two of the authors' experiences introducing equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives in a first‐year science course at a Canadian university. Using critical r…
William Sheldon, Aldous Huxley, and the Dartington connection
When George Bernard Shaw described Dartington Hall as a ‘salon in the countryside’, he was referring to the maelstrom of ideas, conversations, and experimentation around psychology, mysticism, and spirituality within the estate's larger ethos of community living and rural reform. Disenchanted with the effects of industrialization and the ravages of the First World War, American railway heiress Dorothy Whitney Elmhirst and her second husband, Leon…
The Evolution of Hanne Wassermann’s ‘ Gymnastik Methode ’ in Vienna’s Golden Autumn
Hanne Wassermann’s contributions to teaching gymnastics and body culture during Vienna’s interwar period took place within the rich contexts of ongoing developments in radium research, psychology, physiology and anatomy, and gynecology. This paper explores the movement theories she developed for her classes as well as the ways in which she distinguished her teaching from other renowned female physical culturalists of the time. In ‘Tägliche Gymnas…
Spatial-temporal expansion and determinants of light pollution in India's riparian habitats
Speaking Back to Sheldon
In 1991, a reviewer of Somatotyping-Development and Applications celebrated author Barbara Honeyman-Heath as the ‘doyenne of somatotyping’, crediting her for ‘entering this embattled arena 50 years after the publication that started it all, William Sheldon's Varieties of Human Physique (1940)’. Sheldon, creator of the somatotype, had been disparaged since the late 1940s for drawing undue relationships among social deviance, temperament and physiq…
Changing Debates and Shifting Landscapes in Science Studies
Few studies consider how changes in science studies education might reduce barriers to fruitful engagement with scientific practices. This paper is co-authored by the participants and instructor of a small interdisciplinary graduate seminar at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. The seminar reflected on the role of value-judgments in science, considering the learning experiences of a science studies student (AR, first a…
How about Some Muscle? Charles H. McCloy’s Contributions to Physical Education in China between 1913 and 1926
The work of American physical educator Charles H. McCloy during his stay in China between 1913 and 1926 illuminates the nexus of nationalism, modernity, and the training of the body that emerged in international reform movements. It provides an overview of his early interest and training in physical education in the United States before accepting a position with the YMCA in China. Never at a loss for words, rarely short of an opinion, McCloy’s wo…
A Distinctly Indian Body? K.V. Iyer and Physical Culture in 1930s India
Focusing on the career of K.V. Iyer, an Indian physical culturist of international renown, the following paper represents an in-depth discussion of exercise and bodybuilding practices in 1930s India. Through an exploration of Iyer’s life, correspondence and exercise courses, it is argued that Iyer can be used as a prism through which ideas of colonial struggle, nationalism and modernity in India can be explored. Combining Western and Indian thoug…
Music and Movement, Ragas and Dances
There is a long history of collaboration within the Indian performing arts, blurring the spaces between their performance and reception. The careers of the Shankar brothers illuminate this intimacy; Ravi the sitarist and Uday the dancer represent two sides of the same coin. Both achieved success at moments of heightened Western interest in Oriental culture yet were criticized by Indian nationalists for adapting performances to suit Western tastes…
The “Y” Goes to India
Springfield College was at the forefront of the American YMCA’s early drive to train and send physical educators overseas as international secretaries to impart the YMCA’s brand of Muscular Christianity through healthy sport and exercise. When American evangelist Harry Crowe Buck arrived to direct the YMCA School of Physical Education in Madras in 1920, however, he felt compelled to address competing “systems” of physical education being exploite…
Uday Shankar and the Dartington Hall Trust
When George Bernard Shaw called Dartington Hall ‘a Salon in the Countryside’, it was a paean to its wealthy owners and their ‘utopian’ plans to establish a place of experiment and innovation in the Devonshire countryside in the 1920s. The Elmhirsts prioritised dance from the beginning, lavishing considerable resources upon its development, such that when Oriental dancer Uday Shankar was introduced to Dartington in 1934 he found willing benefactor…
Spatial-temporal expansion and determinants of light pollution in India's riparian habitats
How about Some Muscle? Charles H. McCloy’s Contributions to Physical Education in China between 1913 and 1926
The work of American physical educator Charles H. McCloy during his stay in China between 1913 and 1926 illuminates the nexus of nationalism, modernity, and the training of the body that emerged in international reform movements. It provides an overview of his early interest and training in physical education in the United States before accepting a position with the YMCA in China. Never at a loss for words, rarely short of an opinion, McCloy’s wo…
Uday Shankar and the Dartington Hall Trust
When George Bernard Shaw called Dartington Hall ‘a Salon in the Countryside’, it was a paean to its wealthy owners and their ‘utopian’ plans to establish a place of experiment and innovation in the Devonshire countryside in the 1920s. The Elmhirsts prioritised dance from the beginning, lavishing considerable resources upon its development, such that when Oriental dancer Uday Shankar was introduced to Dartington in 1934 he found willing benefactor…
How about Some Muscle? Charles H. McCloy’s Contributions to Physical Education in China between 1913 and 1926
The work of American physical educator Charles H. McCloy during his stay in China between 1913 and 1926 illuminates the nexus of nationalism, modernity, and the training of the body that emerged in international reform movements. It provides an overview of his early interest and training in physical education in the United States before accepting a position with the YMCA in China. Never at a loss for words, rarely short of an opinion, McCloy’s wo…
A Distinctly Indian Body? K.V. Iyer and Physical Culture in 1930s India
Focusing on the career of K.V. Iyer, an Indian physical culturist of international renown, the following paper represents an in-depth discussion of exercise and bodybuilding practices in 1930s India. Through an exploration of Iyer’s life, correspondence and exercise courses, it is argued that Iyer can be used as a prism through which ideas of colonial struggle, nationalism and modernity in India can be explored. Combining Western and Indian thoug…
Music and Movement, Ragas and Dances
There is a long history of collaboration within the Indian performing arts, blurring the spaces between their performance and reception. The careers of the Shankar brothers illuminate this intimacy; Ravi the sitarist and Uday the dancer represent two sides of the same coin. Both achieved success at moments of heightened Western interest in Oriental culture yet were criticized by Indian nationalists for adapting performances to suit Western tastes…
The “Y” Goes to India
Springfield College was at the forefront of the American YMCA’s early drive to train and send physical educators overseas as international secretaries to impart the YMCA’s brand of Muscular Christianity through healthy sport and exercise. When American evangelist Harry Crowe Buck arrived to direct the YMCA School of Physical Education in Madras in 1920, however, he felt compelled to address competing “systems” of physical education being exploite…
Speaking Back to Sheldon
In 1991, a reviewer of Somatotyping-Development and Applications celebrated author Barbara Honeyman-Heath as the ‘doyenne of somatotyping’, crediting her for ‘entering this embattled arena 50 years after the publication that started it all, William Sheldon's Varieties of Human Physique (1940)’. Sheldon, creator of the somatotype, had been disparaged since the late 1940s for drawing undue relationships among social deviance, temperament and physiq…
Changing Debates and Shifting Landscapes in Science Studies
Few studies consider how changes in science studies education might reduce barriers to fruitful engagement with scientific practices. This paper is co-authored by the participants and instructor of a small interdisciplinary graduate seminar at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. The seminar reflected on the role of value-judgments in science, considering the learning experiences of a science studies student (AR, first a…
Incorporating equity, diversity, and inclusion in science
Questions of equity, diversity, and inclusion in the sciences have taken center stage in light of the COVID‐19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement of 2020. This paper focuses on the experiences of academics engaging in such work, particularly in their roles as educators, by sharing two of the authors' experiences introducing equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives in a first‐year science course at a Canadian university. Using critical r…
William Sheldon, Aldous Huxley, and the Dartington connection
When George Bernard Shaw described Dartington Hall as a ‘salon in the countryside’, he was referring to the maelstrom of ideas, conversations, and experimentation around psychology, mysticism, and spirituality within the estate's larger ethos of community living and rural reform. Disenchanted with the effects of industrialization and the ravages of the First World War, American railway heiress Dorothy Whitney Elmhirst and her second husband, Leon…
The Evolution of Hanne Wassermann’s ‘ Gymnastik Methode ’ in Vienna’s Golden Autumn
Hanne Wassermann’s contributions to teaching gymnastics and body culture during Vienna’s interwar period took place within the rich contexts of ongoing developments in radium research, psychology, physiology and anatomy, and gynecology. This paper explores the movement theories she developed for her classes as well as the ways in which she distinguished her teaching from other renowned female physical culturalists of the time. In ‘Tägliche Gymnas…
Spatial-temporal expansion and determinants of light pollution in India's riparian habitats
Energy literacy
Energy literacy is a developing field of research and practice that provides a comprehensive way of understanding how energy functions in the universe, on the earth, and in our social and personal lives. This literature review, building on an increasing momentum of research across various disciplines, outlines current energy literacy scholarship focused on a range of educational contexts (i.e., K-12, higher and post-secondary, teacher education a…
Transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary programmes for collaborative graduate research training
This paper documents a case study examining collaborative transdisciplinary (TD) and interdisciplinary (ID) graduate programmes at the University of British Columbia (a large, public, research-intensive university in Canada) – serving as a model for other universities globally. TD and ID programmes in higher education can ultimately create a new generation of researchers who are capable of contending with complex problems by equipping them with a…
Using a Mixed-Methods Approach to Examine the Expanding Reach of Body Classification into the Twenty-First Century
This article uses a mixed-methods approach combining historical inquiry and quantitative science mapping techniques to examine the expanding reach of the somatotype body measurement and classification system, based on posture photography and anthropometric measurements, well into the twenty-first century. It illuminates the persistence of deterministic thinking about the relationships between physique and athletic ability in physical education an…
One size fits all
The categories we use to make sense of a place are never neutral. Scientific classifications can maintain ignorance about some aspects of a landscape, even as they create knowledge about others. This article considers this in the context of Ethiopia's Bale Mountains National Park, a landscape whose hydrologic and socio-cultural characteristics have been made inscrutable through the convergence of imperial legacies, processes of knowledge producti…
“That new breed of medical aide, the physiotherapist, was slightly suspect. At least they can’t do any harm was a prevalent attitude”
In exploring the early path to the professionalization of physiotherapy in the province of British Columbia from the 1920s to 1960s, the authors aim to shed light on the shaping of professional health care regulations at a formative moment in Canadian history. The return of Canadian veterans suffering from devastating war injuries following the Second World War, in addition to serious civilian outbreaks of poliomyelitis, precipitated demands for …
Training the algorithm
Research on women’s body image has often focused on the potential harms associated with engaging with health and fitness content on Instagram. Recently, scholars have turned their attention to exploring women’s agency in relation to social media to examine how particular groups of individuals participate in the curation of their online worlds in pursuit of a positive body image. In particular, we consider the experiences of specific racial groups…
Political science (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Law (8 works) · Pedagogy (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · History (5 works) · History (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Medicine (4 works)