Anjan Sundaram


Anjan Sundaram is an Indian author, journalist and television presenter whose work ranges from conflict and dictatorship to technology and nature.

Personal life

Sundaram was born in Ranchi, India, and grew up between India and Dubai. He studied at Rishi Valley School in India. After enrolling in the electrical engineering programme at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, he moved to the United States and graduated from Yale University in 2005. Sundaram earned a master's degree in mathematics as an undergraduate at Yale, studying abstract algebra under mathematician Serge Lang. He then began his writing career, reporting for The New York Times and The Associated Press from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and India, among other countries. He taught journalism in 2016 at Brockwood Park, an alternative school founded by Jiddu Krishnamurti in Hampshire, England. In 2018, he obtained a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, with a focus on postcolonial narratives.

Books

Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship, about the destruction of free speech and the rise of dictatorship in Rwanda, was published in January 2016 to strong critical acclaim, with the Guardian calling it a "required reading...a superb exposé of dictatorship" and the Washington Post describing it as "courageous and heartfelt." Sundaram's first book Stringer: A Reporter's Journey in the Congo, a coming of age memoir that explores the neglect of the world's deadliest war in Congo, earned him comparisons to Ryszard Kapuściński and V. S. Naipaul. Stringer was featured on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, who called the book "remarkable". It was also a Royal African Society book of the year and a BBC book of the week. A feature of Sundaram's writing is his immersion in a place and his portrayals of what it feels like to be there. In 2015 a jury of journalists awarded him the annual Frontline Club prize for his war reporting from the Central African Republic. He received a Reuters environmental journalism prize in 2006 for his reporting from the Democratic Republic of Congo. His books have received and been nominated for several prizes.

Television

Sundaram hosted a four-part television series called Coded World in 2019. The four episodes explore how algorithms and artificial intelligence are changing humans. The series combines Sundaram's expertise in mathematics and journalism.
He hosted a four-part series in 2016 called Deciphering India with Anjan Sundaram, which explores the contentious rise of nationalism in India. The episodes were titled "Godmen", "The Sacred Cow", "The Great Indian Male" and "Identity".

Talks

His TED talk in 2017, titled Why I risked my life to expose a government massacre, is about his reporting on remote conflicts.
In 2016 he gave a talk called Detecting a Dictatorship at the Oslo Freedom Forum, about journalists who confronted Rwanda's authoritarian government.