Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Who is Sanjay Subrahmanyam?

Sanjay Subrahmanyam is an Indian historian who specialises in the early modern period. He holds the Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences at UCLA which he joined in 2004. In 2012, Subrahmanyam won the Infosys Prize for humanities for his "path-breaking contribution to history". Historian Srinath Raghavan wrote of Subrahmanyam in 2013,

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.