Sunil Amrith Discusses His Recent MacArthur Fellowship Award

In this episode we speak with Sunil Amrith, Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of History at Harvard University. He is the author of the 2006 book Decolonizing International Health: South and Southeast Asia, 1930-1965 and the 2011 book Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia. His most recent book, published in 2013, is Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants. Amrith speaks with Pedro Machado who is Associate Professor of History at Indiana University and whose own work focuses on the history of social and commercial connections between western India and southeastern Africa. Their conversation explores Amrith’s most recent book as well as what his recent award might mean for his future research. They begin by discussing Amrith’s AHR article, “Tamil Diasporas across the Bay of Bengal,” which appeared in the June 2009 issue. Read Amrith's article in the AHR: https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.114.3.547 Listeners may also be interested in the December 2016 AHR forum on Amitav Ghosh's "Ibis Trilogy": https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/121.5.1521