Saraswathi Shukla is a doctoral student at UC Berkeley writing her dissertation, “The Harpsichord at the Intersection of Art and Science during the Ancien Régime”, which explores the social, scientific and philosophical ramifications of ravalement practices in 18th-century France, under the direction of Philippe Canguilhem and Nicholas Mathew. She received her MA in Musicology from UC Berkeley (2015), her AB in History from Princeton University (2012), and is the recipient of numerous research grants, including the Chateaubriand, Lurcy and DAAD Fellowships. Saraswathi is an avid harpsichordist and continues to study and teach the instrument while conducting research on keyboard music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.