Sunil Amrith
Sunil S. Amrith is a historian who holds the position of the Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies at Harvard University. He is also co-director of the Joint Center for History and Economics between Harvard and the University of Cambridge, and interim director of Harvard's Mahindra Humanities Center. His research interests include transnational migration in South and Southeast Asia.
Amrith was born in Kenya to parents from Tamil Nadu. He received his postsecondary education at the University of Cambridge, and then taught at Birkbeck, University of London until he became a professor of history at Harvard in 2015. On 20 April 2020, Yale University announced that they had appointed Amrith as their Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History. His appointment is set to be effective on 1 July.
Amrith was awarded the 2016 Infosys Prize in Humanities for his contributions to the fields of the history of migration, environmental history, the history of international public health, and the history of contemporary Asia. He became a MacArthur Fellow in 2017. Amrith has also authored numerous books on his research. Unruly Waters, which studies the influence of water on the political and economic development of the Indian subcontinent, was shortlisted for the 2019 Cundill History Prize.
