iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
The Fukuoka Academic Prize has been awarded to Sunil Amrith, a U.S. historian who practices “global history” from multiple perspectives such as environment and immigration. Fukuoka City’s Secretariat of Fukuoka Prize Committee on May 27 announced laureates for the Fukuoka Prize 2024 designed to honor those who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of Asian studies and arts and culture.
Sunil Amrith is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University, with a secondary appointment as Professor at the Yale School of the Environment. He is also the current Chair of the Council on South Asian Studies at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.
The Fukuoka Grand Prize has been awarded to Manabe Daito, a Japanese artist showcasing the potential of art by combining artistic expression, advanced science, and technology. Kimsooja, a South Korean artist with an international presence with work based on Asian culture, has won the Arts and Culture Prize.
The Award Ceremony will be held on September 26, 2024. Manabe’s public lecture is scheduled for September 27, and Amrith’s and Kimsooja’s for September 28. The Fukuoka Prize is awarded by Fukuoka City for the purpose of its international contribution to Asia to honor those who have made outstanding achievements in preservation and creation of unique and diverse Asian cultures. The prize was established in 1990 by Fukuoka City, which has played a significant role as Japan’s gateway for exchanges with the rest of the Asian region since ancient times. The prize will mark its 34th anniversary this year.
The prize has so far been presented to 124 leaders in their respective fields from 28 countries and areas. Past laureates include Muhammad Yunus from Bangladesh, who also received the Nobel Peace Prize; and Nakamura Tetsu from Japan, who took the lead in medical services, land reclamation, and social welfare for the sick and vulnerable in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Amrith’s research focuses on the movements of people and the ecological processes that have connected South and Southeast Asia and has expanded to encompass global environmental history. He has published in the fields of environmental history, the history of migration, and the history of public health. Amrith is the recipient of the 2022 Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for History, a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship, and the 2016 Infosys Prize in Humanities. His work on environmental justice received a “Scientific Breakthrough of the Year” award from the Falling Walls Foundation in 2022.
Amrith’s new book, to appear in 2024, is The Burning Earth, an environmental history of the modern world that foregrounds the experiences of the Global South. It will be published by W.W. Norton in North America and by Allen Lane in the UK and South Asia, as well as in Chinese, Korean, Italian, Dutch, German, and French translations.
Born in Kenya, Amrith grew up in Singapore and moved to the United Kingdom to study history at Cambridge University, where he also received his Ph.D. in 2005. After working briefly as a researcher at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was appointed a lecturer at Birbeck College, part of the University of London. He was appointed the Mehra Family Professor of South Asian History at Harvard University in 2015 and in 2020 came to Yale.
