Manan Ahmed Asif, commonly known as Manan Ahmed, is a historian of South Asia and West Asia, who works as an associate professor at the

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

. He is the founder of the

South Asia South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.;;;;; ...

blog ''Chapati Mystery'' and co-founder o
Columbia's Group for Experimental Methods in Humanistic Research

Career

Ahmed holds a BA from Punjab University, Lahore and a second from

Miami University Miami University (informally Miami of Ohio or simply Miami) is a public research university in Oxford, Ohio. The university was founded in 1809, making it the second-oldest university in Ohio (behind Ohio University, founded in 1804) and the 1 ...

in Ohio. Ahmed earned a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

in 2008. At Chicago, Ahmed studied under Muzaffar Alam,

Fred Donner Fred McGraw Donner (born 1945) is a scholar of Islam and Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Near Eastern History at the University of Chicago.

, and Ronald Inden. Ahmed's work often combines archaeological, numismatic, epigraphic, and literary evidence and focuses on the history of

. According to Ahmed, Muslim presence in the subcontinent is not to be understood as a history of conquests or Manichean conflict (religious, military, etc.). Ahmed, argues instead, that we recognize that presence as “lived spaces” (A Book 49), interconnected with each other across the region, and full of particularities that must be understood in their own terms. In 2014, he helped co-foun
Columbia's Group for Experimental Methods in Humanistic Research
which focuses on “mobilized humanities” and innovations in scholarly methodologies. One of the recent projects, ''Torn Apart/Separados,'' a series of rapidly produced data visualizations, responded to the Trump administration family separation policy announced by the United States government in 2018. The project located 113 shelters used to house children separated from their parents at the Mexico-United States Border.

Works

* 2016 ''A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia''.

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the reti ...

; (10); (13). * 2011 ''Where the Wild Frontiers Are: Pakistan and the American Imagination''. Just World Publications; (10); (13). * 2020 ''The Loss of Hindustan''. HUP/Harper Publications;.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ahmed, Manan American academics of Pakistani descent Living people 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers 1971 births Columbia University faculty American male non-fiction writers