Near Wellawatte Railway Station, Colombo (2016). Photo by Kalyani Ramnath.
I am a historian of modern South Asia, with research and teaching interests in legal history, histories of migration and displacement, transnational history, and questions of archival method. My first book is Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia 1942 - 1962 (Stanford University Press, 2023). I am working on a second book tentatively titled Adrift in the Indian Ocean, for which I was recently awarded a year-long ACLS Fellowship.
Copies of Boats in a Storm can be ordered via links below:
I am an Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University. I received my Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in 2018, and was a Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at the Center for History and Economics at Harvard University from 2018 - 2021. I also hold a bachelor's degree in arts and law (B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) (JD equivalent) from the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) and a master's degree in law (LL.M.) from the Yale Law School.