Sunil Amrith

Sunil Amrith is a British-Singaporean historian and the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University. He was born in Singapore and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he also completed his doctorate. He has written widely on the history of Asia, migration, public health, and the environment. Amrith's books include Decolonizing International Health: India and Southeast Asia, 1930–65 (2006), Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia (2011), Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants (2013), and Unruly Waters: How Rains, Rivers, Coasts, and Seas Have Shaped Asian History (2018). His book The Burning Earth: A History of Fire and Humanity (2024) is a sweeping global history of fire—its role in human civilisation, its relationship to ecology and climate, and its return as an existential threat in the age of climate change. The book won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction in 2025. Amrith is a MacArthur Fellow. He divides his time between New Haven, Connecticut, and the United Kingdom.