Sanjay Subrahmanyam

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Sanjay Subrahmanyam at Festival Etonnant Voyageur de Saint-Malo (France), 2014 Sanjay Subrahmanyam 2014.jpg
Sanjay Subrahmanyam at Festival Étonnant Voyageur de Saint-Malo (France), 2014

Sanjay Subrahmanyam (born 21 May 1961) is a historian of the early modern period. He is the author of several books and publications. He holds the Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences at UCLA which he joined in 2004. [1]

Contents

Background and education

Sanjay Subramanyam is the son of K. Subrahmanyam and his wife Sulochana. [2] He was brought up in a Tamil Brahmin family, [3] [4] His father was a prominent expert on strategic affairs. Sanjay has an elder sister, and two elder brothers: Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who retired from the Indian Foreign Service as its head, and serves now as India's Minister of External Affairs in the BJP government; and S. Vijay Kumar, who followed their father into the Indian Administrative Service. [5] Subrahmanyam is married to a UCLA historian of modern France, Caroline Ford.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam graduated with a BA (Hons) in economics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi. [6] [7] He received his MA and PhD in 1987 in economic history from the Delhi School of Economics on the topic of "Trade and the Regional Economy of South India, c. 1550–1650".

Work

Subrahmanyam taught economic history and comparative economic development at the Delhi School of Economics till 1995. He then moved to Paris as Directeur d'études in the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, where he taught history of the Mughal empire, and the comparative history of early modern empires till 2002.[ citation needed ] In 2002, Subrahmanyam moved to Oxford University as the first holder of the newly created Chair in Indian History and Culture. In 2004 he became the Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair in Indian History at UCLA, and a year later, in 2005, he became the founding Director of UCLA's Center for India and South Asia. [2] In 2014 he was appointed to the Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences at UCLA.[ citation needed ]

Accolades

In 2012, Subrahmanyam was awarded the first Infosys Prize in Humanities, for his 'path-breaking contribution to history'. [8] He also served as a Humanities jury member for the prize from 2019. [9]

He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009 and as a corresponding fellow to the British Academy in 2016. Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania selected Dr. Subrahmanyam as the 2009 Mary Flexner Lecturer. He was elected professor and to the chair Histoire Globale de la Première Modernité at the Collège de France in 2013.

On 6 February 2017, Subrahmanyam received an honoris causa doctorate from the Université catholique de Louvain. [10]

The Martine Aublet Prize for 2018 was awarded to Subrahmanyam for his book, L'inde sous les yeux de l'Europe: mots, peuples, empires (Alma Editeur, 2018), by the Musée de Quai Branly. [11]

In February 2019, Sanjay Subrahmanyam was awarded the Dan David Prize for History (jointly with Kenneth Pomeranz, Chicago). [12]

In 2022, Sanjay Subrahmanyam was awarded the Comité International des Sciences Historiques (CISH) Prize in History at the XXIII Congress of the Historical Sciences in Poznan, Poland. [13]


Historian Srinath Raghavan wrote of Subrahmanyam in 2013, [14]

His scholarship spans the entire early modern period, from the 15th to 18th centuries CE, and more besides. Similarly, his geographical expertise stretches from South, South-East and West Asia to Western Europe and Latin America. Then there are his technical skills, ranging from statistical analysis of economic data to interpretation of literary and visual materials. Although Subrahmanyam began as an economic historian, he has branched out to work on political, intellectual and cultural history. He works in over ten European and Asian languages and draws on sources from a dazzling array of archives. Finally, there is his sheer productivity. Subrahmanyam seems to write top-class history faster than most of us can read.

Selected publications

Co-author

Editor/co-editor

Notes

  1. "Faculty — History". www.history.ucla.edu. Archived from the original on 15 October 2009. Retrieved 7 October 2009.
  2. 1 2 Shah, Angilee. "UCLA Center for India and South Asia Hard-working and prolific scholar to head new center". www.international.ucla.edu. Retrieved 7 October 2009.
  3. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (1998). "Hearing Voices: Vignettes of Early Modernity in South Asia, 1400-1750". Daedalus. 127 (3): 75–104. ISSN   0011-5266. JSTOR   20027508.
  4. "Misreading the Past". The India Forum. 17 May 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2023.
  5. "Mr S Vijay Kumar - TERI". www.teriin.org. Archived from the original on 5 March 2014. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
  6. "Sanjay Subramanyam - College de France" (PDF).
  7. Lardinois, Roland (18 October 2013). "The story of connected history". Books & Ideas.
  8. "Infosys Prize - Laureates 2012 - Prof. Sanjay Subrahmanyam". www.infosys-science-foundation.com. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
  9. "Infosys Prize - Jury 2020". www.infosys-science-foundation.com. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
  10. "Sanjay Subrahmanyam, historien global". Université catholique de Louvain. Retrieved 21 December 2019.
  11. Le prix Martine Aublet
  12. Sanjay Subrahmanyam - Dan David Prize
  13. "Sanjay Subrahmanyam awarded the 2020/2022 International Prize for History CISH". International Committee of Historical Sciences. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
  14. Srinath Raghavan. "Master of Centuries". The Caravan. 1 July 2013.

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