Sunil Amrith
Yale University
Sunil Amrith is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History, and current chair of the South Asian Studies Council at Yale University, USA. His research focuses on the movements of people and the ecological processes that have connected South and Southeast Asia. Amrith’s areas of particular interest include environmental history, the history of migration, and the history of public health. He is a 2017 MacArthur Fellow, and recipient of the 2016 Infosys Prize in Humanities. Amrith’s most recent book is Unruly Waters (Basic Books and Penguin UK), a history of the struggle to understand and control the monsoon in modern South Asia. His previous books include Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants (2013), Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia (2011), and Decolonizing International Health: South and Southeast Asia, 1930-1965 (Palgrave, 2006). Amrith is currently writing an environmental history of the modern world. Other projects include collaborative research with Professor David S. Jones (Harvard University), on the history of air pollution and health in India, and a new collaboration with Professor Akiyuki Kawasaki (Tokyo University) on water-related disasters and inequality, focusing on four smaller cities in the Bay of Bengal region.