Sunil Amrith

Sunil S. Amrith (born 4 September 1979)

Biography Amrith was born in Nairobi, Kenya, to Indian parents. His father was a banker and his mother an eye surgeon. Amrith was raised and educated in Singapore after his parents moved there in 1980.

From 2006 to 2015, Amrith taught modern Asian history at Birkbeck, University of London. He also co-directed the Joint Center for History and Economics between Harvard and the University of Cambridge and was interim director of Harvard's Mahindra Humanities Center (2019–2020). In March 2025, he became the Henry R. Luce Director of Yale's Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.

Amrith resides with his wife, British barrister and Harvard University lecturer Ruth Coffey,

Awards 2014 American Historical Association's John F. Richards prize for Crossing the Bay of Bengal 2017 MacArthur Fellowship 2019: shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize for his book Unruly Waters, which studies the influence of water on the political and economic development of the Indian subcontinent 2022 Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History to honour "his search for the historical origins of the great inequality that exists between and within countries" 2022 Falling Walls Foundation Science Breakthrough of the Year award for "Breaking the Wall to Reimagining Environmental Justice in Historical Perspective" 2024 British Academy Fellowship 2024 Fukuoka Academic Prize for being an "outstanding historian of Asia" 2025 Toynbee Prize for his "wide-ranging and ambitious scholarship" 2025 British Academy Book Prize for his "magisterial" and "beautifully written" book The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years 2025 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for The Burning Earth

Works