Soumayashree Mishra 
Professor Kishor K Basa, the current Vice-Chancellor of Maharaja Sriram Chandra Bhanja Deo University in Baripada, has been appointed to the National Monuments Authority as its chairman (NMA).
He will be Odisha’s first social scientist to hold such a prestigious position. He had been teaching archaeological anthropology and museum studies at Utkal University since 1980 and was the former head of the department of Anthropology.
Basa is a Tagore National Fellow at the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, and the Chairman of the Indian National Confederation and Academy of Anthropologists (2019-20). (INCAA).
He received the Surajmal Saha Memorial Gold Medal for placing first in the state of Odisha in the HSC Exam in 1973, and the Professor Ghanshyam Dash Memorial Gold Medal for placing first in the BA History (Honours) exam at Utkal University in 1977.
Basa earned his PhD in 1991 from the University of London. From 1999 to 2000, he was a Commonwealth PostDoctoral Academic Staff Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and he received an Indo-French Cultural Exchange Fellowship in 1997.
He was the former director of the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya in Bhopal (Ministry of Culture, Government of India (2004-2008), the Director of the Indian Museum in Kolkata (2008-2010), and the Director of the Anthropological Survey of India (Additional Charge) (2009-2010)
