South Asian Studies Council at Yale

Congratulations to Sunil Amrith for being named to the 2026 class of Great Immigrants, Great Americans by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation!

Sunil Amrith was born in Nairobi, Kenya, to Indian parents. He spent his childhood in Singapore and later earned a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge. In 2015, Amrith moved to the United States to become a professor of South Asian studies at Harvard University.

Amrith is now the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University, where he also serves as the Henry R. Luce Director of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and as vice provost for international affairs. His work explores migration in South and Southeast Asia, including its role in shaping contemporary social and cultural dynamics and its relationship to environmental change.

“My personal experience of the region has, in a sense, come from observing the constant connectedness between India and Southeast Asia. But when I began studying Indian history at university, I found an absolute disconnect — there was no mention of Southeast Asia,” he told Pacific Standard. “I was struck immediately by how profoundly national and colonial borders have shaped the way professional historians do their work.”

Amrith is the author of several books, including "The Burning Earth," a finalist for the 2025 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and "Crossing the Bay of Bengal," which received the American Historical Association’s John F. Richards Prize. His honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, the Toynbee Prize, the Fukuoka Academic Prize, and the Dr. A. H. Heineken Prize for History. In 2024, he was elected an International Fellow of the British Academy.

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In honor of our founder, Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie, every Fourth of July, we celebrate immigrant contributions to America. Learn more: https://carnegie.org/our-work/special-projects/great-immigrants/

Throughout July and August, South Asian Studies Council summer grant recipients will be taking over our Instagram stories to share their projects, experiences, and behind-the-scenes moments.

Stay tuned for more information on our first takeover next week!

Congratulations to Rohit De and Ornit Shani on being awarded the 2026 annual book prize by ICON•S for Assembling India's Constitution!

The prize recognizes outstanding books in the field of public law.

SASC recently organized the 16th annual Modern South Asia Workshop (MSAW) at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies in Colombo, Sri Lanka. 🇱🇰

18 advanced PhD students in humanities and social sciences programs were invited to present their original research on modern South Asia and receive feedback from peers and established scholars. Participants traveled from institutions across South Asia as well as in Canada, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Learn more here: https://macmillan.yale.edu/southasia/stories/south-asian-studies-council-organizes-18th-modern-south-asia-workshop

Scholars from around the world recently gathered to celebrate the retirement of former SASC Chair Kalyanakrishnan “Shivi” Sivaramakrishnan and honor his extraordinary contributions to South Asian anthropology, agrarian studies, and interdisciplinary scholarship at Yale. Through reflections from students, colleagues, and collaborators, our latest feature article traces Shivi’s lasting impact as a scholar, institution builder, and mentor whose generosity shaped generations of researchers. Read more on our website.

In our latest feature, we spotlight Kaitlin Emmanuel, our 2025–26 Singh Fellow, whose work on Sri Lanka, the Tamil diaspora, and visual culture has expanded conversations on art, archives, and memory at Yale.

From object-based learning in Yale’s collections to research on diasporic art after the Sri Lankan Civil War, the piece explores how Emmanuel brings questions of displacement, history, and representation into the classroom and beyond. Read more on our website.

SASC celebrates several graduating majors, student fellows, and prize winners who have been involved with South Asian Studies. We wish them all the best as they embark on new adventures beyond Yale! 🎓🎉

From debates on happiness and tourism to arguments about space colonization, students from across the country gathered in April for the 2026 Yale Hindi Debate—the only Hindi-language national debate in the United States. Our latest article highlights this growing platform for language learning, public speaking, and community building across universities. Read more on our website.

Dwaipayan Banerjee (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) will be speaking at the South Asian Studies Council on Tuesday, April 21st, on “Computing in the Age of Decolonization: India's Lost Technological Revolution.” Join us to hear this talk in Luce 203 at 12:00 PM.

Gautam Bhatia (Lawyer & Legal Scholar) will be speaking at the South Asian Studies Council next Tuesday, April 14th, on “The Indian Constitution: Conversations with Power.” Join us to hear this talk in Luce 203 at 12:00 PM.