Pratyay Nath is Associate Professor of History, Ashoka University. He is a historian of early modern South Asia, with a focus on the Mughal Empire. His research lies at the crossroads of environmental history, military history, and imperial history. He is the author of Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India (Oxford University Press, 2019); with Meena Bhargava, the co-editor of The Early Modern in South Asia: Querying Modernity, Periodization, and History (Cambridge University Press, 2022). and with Kaustubh Mani Sengupta, the co-editor of ইতিহাসের বিতর্ক, বিতর্কের ইতিহাসঃ অতীতের ভারত ও আজকের গবেষণা [Debates of History, History of Debates: Past India and Present Research] (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 2022). His latest publications include ‘Pilgrimage, Performance, and Peripatetic Kingship: Akbar’s Journeys to Ajmer and the Making of the Mughal Empire’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 33, no. 2 (2023): 271-296 and ‘Looking beyond the Military Revolution: Variations in Early Modern Warfare and the Mughal Case’, Journal of Military History 86, no. 1 (2022): 9-31. He is one of the editors of The Medieval History Journal and of ইতিহাস প্রসঙ্গ, a history book-series in Bangla for Ananda Publishers.
Nath is currently writing his second monograph, which analyses the military campaigns during the reign of the third Mughal emperor Akbar, and their roles in the production of his kingship and empire. His ongoing projects include editing a journal special issue on ‘environment and empire in the early modern world’ ; co-editing (with Ranabir Chakravarti) a volume on the history of the horse in South Asia; co-editing a volume (with Kaustubh Mani Sengupta) on recent methodological shifts and innovations in South Asian historiography; and editing a volume in Bangla on the history of early modern South Asia.
At Ashoka University, Nath’s courses focus on the history of empires and warfare in South Asia, and global histories of environment, warfare, and empire. Before joining Ashoka University in 2016, he taught medieval and early modern history at Miranda House, University of Delhi. He earned his MPhil and PhD in History from Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Before this, he completed his MA in History from University of Calcutta, and BA in History from Presidency College, Calcutta. He is the recipient of DAAD-funded ‘Short-Term Guest Professorship’ (2022) and DAAD-funded ‘A New Passage to India III’ fellowship (2013-14), both to Georg-August Universität, Göttingen, Germany.
