About

Dipesh Chakrabarty is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College at The University of Chicago. He holds a BSc (physics honors) from Presidency College, University of Calcutta, a postgraduate Diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and a PhD in history from the Australian National University. Chakrabarty is a faculty fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory and a courtesy faculty member in the Law School. He is a founding member of the editorial collective of Subaltern Studies, a consulting editor of Critical Inquiry, and a founding editor of Postcolonial Studies. His scholarly work focuses on postcolonial thought, global and planetary histories, and the intersections of climate change and human history. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the European Essay Prize for his work on climate history, honorary doctorates from the University of London, University of Antwerp, and École Normale Supérieure, and fellowships at prestigious institutions such as the Max Planck Institute, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and the British Academy. Chakrabarty's research supervision encompasses topics like modern Indian history, South Asian cultures, and environmental history, with recent publications exploring climate change, planetary humanities, and postcolonial theory.

Research topics

• History
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Geography
• Law
• Astrobiology
• Geology
• Gender studies
• Physics
• Climatology

Selected publications

• The Hindu/Presidency College

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2026-03-15

  bookSenior author

  With a focus on the Hindu/Presidency College, this book offers new ways of doing histories of education in colonial and postcolonial historical settings. Each essay utilizes new archival materials to present “liberal arts” education as an arena of competition, conversation, the rise of new disciplines, and politics. The everyday life of the College comes alive in a set of interdisciplinary essays that analyse different aspects of the institution's existence from student publications to the challenges of under-funding. Together, they shed new light on the daily labour and strife as well as the work of the imagination that shaped a centre of excellence. Excellence, however, was also premised upon social, cultural, and financial exclusions that cannot be ignored as we write new global histories of education and intellectual life in postcolonial India. The volume offers vital historical insight into the survival and challenges faced by an educational institution that is salutary as higher education, globally, faces unprecedented challenges.

  PublisherDOI

• Critique and Criticism, in Times of Crisis

  Foucault Studies · 2026-03-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Meanings of Climate Change in advance

  Philosophy Today · 2026-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  A leading historian and theorist of climate change, Dipesh Chakrabarty speaks with the philosopher and poet Travis Holloway about a range of issues, including: Chakrabarty’s concepts of the planetary and a planetary age; Chakrabarty’s engagement with philosophical debates concerning history; the turn in Chakrabarty’s work towards climate change and the geological; the relationship between his work on capitalism and postcolonialism and his work on climate change and geological histories; Chakrabarty’s response to the Anthropocene debate; and the meaning of climate change. Dipesh Chakrabarty is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Chicago and author of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age, Provincializing Europe, and other works. Travis Holloway is a philosopher, a translator, and a poet and former Goldwater Fellow in Poetry at New York University. His most recent book is How to Live at the End of the World: Theory, Art, and Politics for the Anthropocene.

  PublisherDOI

• Some Ironies and Anomalies in the History of Subaltern Studies

  2025-04-24 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter reminisces about the historical period and the fervent, debates and political processes that gave shape to Subaltern Studies in the early 1980s. It comments on the significance acquired by peasants in 1970s, particularly among Left ideologues and intellectuals. Here, peasants were rendered as an identifiable social group whose political potential was expected to occasion revolutions leading non-capitalist futures, and links it with the choice of the peasant as the paradigmatic subaltern. Chakrabarty reflects on the transition in Subaltern Studies from an important intervention in colonial and national(ist) history and historiography into global, postcolonial-global “studies” (instead of “discipline”) from the 1990s in tune with changing socio-political circumstances and academic imperatives.

  PublisherDOI

• Žmogaus būklė antropoceno epochoje. 1-2 paskaitos

  Athena filosofijos studijos · 2025-12-30

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Jau kur laik siekiu apmstyti klausim, kaip globalizacijos -didjanio pasaulio susietumo -ir globalinio atilimo susikertanios temos formuoja ms gyvena-

  PublisherDOI

• História e políticas de reconhecimento

  LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · 2025-02-05

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Nesse ensaio, Dipesh Chakrabarty reflete sobre a “política de reconhecimento” abordando o que ela significa para a escrita da história contemporânea, sobretudo, quando se consideram as convenções tradicionais relativas à objetividade e à distância histórica. Publicado em 2007, o manifesto problematiza essas questões e considera a relação entre identidade, direito e história a partir da posição única de Chakrabarty como historiador indiano formado em uma universidade australiana, atento tanto à experiência dos dalits, quanto às reivindicações dos aborígenes por terras na Austrália. As demandas por história e por direitos desses grupos considerados “subalternos” levam à emergência de uma “mistura particular entre história e memória” que desafia as formas correntes de pesquisa e escrita da história. Essa combinação coloca em evidência uma comodificação da experiência e inaugura, assim, uma nova relação com o passado, mediado agora mais pela mídia do que pelo aparato científico e disciplinar da história. Diante disso, a “política de reconhecimento” demanda dos historiadores a expansão não só do seu horizonte ético de atuação, quanto uma autoanálise crítica sobre o seu papel na luta por direitos.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Kapitalizm, praca i podstawa dla historii planetarnych

  Klio - Czasopismo Poświęcone Dziejom Polski i Powszechnym · 2024-05-20

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Translation of the opnening lecture during XXIII International Congress of Historical Sciences (CAPITALISM, WORK, AND THE GROUND FOR PLANETARY HISTORIES)

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Prologue: India in the World

  2024-01-11

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter accentuates the conversation between India and the world, with an emphasis on the second half of the 19th century to the present day. Dipesh Chakrabarty explores notions of civilization and ethics, drawing in particular from four representative Indian voices: Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. The chapter examines their influence on India in terms of postcolonialism, modernization, globalization and how their views and approaches shaped India's relationship with the Western world. Looking forwards to issues such as climate change, Chakrabarty argues that Tagore and Gandhi's civilizational critique has renewed new relevance in the world today.

  PublisherDOI

• Portrait d'un monde cassé

  Gallimard eBooks · 2024-04-25

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Humanities in the anthropocene

  Jagiellonian University Repository (Jagiellonian University) · 2023-01-01

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Tom Humanistyka w czasach antropocenu zbiera najważniejsze teksty Dipesha Chakrabarty’ego, jednego z najwybitniejszych w świecie przedstawicieli studiów postkolonialnych i zaangażowanego w dyskusje na temat zmian klimatycznych historyka. Interesując się relacjami między Zachodem a światem niezachodnim, Chakrabarty krytycznie podchodzi do eurocentrycznych wizji przeszłości, realizując projekt "prowincjonalizowania Europy". W niezwykle ciekawy sposób łączy przy tym badania postkolonialne z analizami procesów globalizacji, krytyką kapitalizmu, przepisywaniem historii i rozważaniami na temat antropogenicznych zmian środowiska. Angażująca lektura jego tekstów wprowadza w tematy szeroko dziś dyskutowanych w humanistyce światowej relacji między kryzysem środowiskowym a globalnym kapitalizmem oraz między sprawiedliwością społeczną, środowiskową a epistemiczną. Humanistyka w czasach antropocenu pokazuje ponadto inspirowane dyskusjami na temat tytułowej epoki wyłanianie się humanistyki planetarnej, która podchodząc krytycznie do studiów nad antropocenem, proponuje inne niż tradycyjne paradygmaty ujęcie czasu i rozumienia człowieka, rozpatrywanego w ścisłym związku z bytami innymi niż ludzie.

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Frequent coauthors

• Jean Comaroff

  26 shared

• Maria Martínez

  University of California, Irvine

  25 shared

• Andrew Apter

  Biblioteca Nacional de España

  25 shared

• Paul Ross

  Biblioteca Nacional de España

  25 shared

• Ulrike Strasser

  25 shared

• Robin Derby

  Biblioteca Nacional de España

  25 shared

• Kurt Macmillan

  University of California, Irvine

  25 shared

• Joshua M. Kaplan

  25 shared

Awards & honors

• Prix Européen de l’Essai or the European Essay Prize for Apr…
• DLitt. (Honoris Causa), University of London (2010)
• Honorary doctorate, University of Antwerp, Belgium (2011)
• Honorary doctorate, École Normale Supérieure (2021)
• Toynbee Foundation Prize, for contributions to global histor…