Sunil Amrith

Sunil Amrith is Mehra Family professor of South Asian studies and professor of history, and a director of the Joint Center for History and Economics. Amirth’s research is on the trans-regional movement of people, ideas, and institutions, and has focused most recently on the Bay of Bengal as a region connecting South and Southeast Asia. His areas of particular interest include the history of migration, environmental history, and the history of public health.

Amirth's most recent book, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants was awarded the American Historical Association’s John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History in 2014. He is also the author of Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia, and Decolonizing International Heath: South and Southeast Asia, 1930-1965, as well as articles in journals including the American Historical Review, Past and Present, and Economic and Political Weekly. He is currently writing a history of water and environmental change in South Asia. Sunil Amrith is the recipient of the 2016 Infosys Prize in Humanities.

Amrith sits on the editorial boards of Modern Asian Studies, History Workshop Journal, and Past and Present. He is one of the series editors of the Cambridge University Press book series, Asian Connections, and of the Princeton University Press book series, Histories of Economic Life.

Sunil Amrith grew up in Singapore, and received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Cambridge. Before coming to Harvard in 2015, he spent nine years teaching at Birkbeck College, University of London.