Royal Asiatic Society

Member Profile

Professor Sarah Ansari

 

A short biography

Sarah is a professor of history specialising in South Asia at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the current President of the RAS. Much of her research focuses on the province of Sindh (today in Pakistan), and addresses issues connected with religion, migration, identity, citizenship and gender. Her latest monograph (Boundaries of Belonging, CUP 2019, co-written with William Gould) explores citizenship and rights in early independent India and Pakistan. Ansari’s Life after Partition (Oxford, 2005) dealt with the effects of the partition of India on the province of Sindh and in Karachi, and was described by Manu Bhagavan in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History as speaking to “matters of pressing contemporary importance, revealing how history is inherently linked to, and informs, the present”.

Professor Ansari was honorary editor of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 20 years before becoming President of the Society in 2021.