Indian-Origin Historian Sunil Amrith Wins British Academy Book Prize for “The Burning Earth

Indian-origin historian Sunil Amrith has been awarded the 2025 British Academy Book Prize for his acclaimed work The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years. The £25,000 honour recognises outstanding non-fiction writing in the humanities and social sciences, celebrating books that deepen global understanding through exceptional research.

A Global Scholar with Indian Roots

Sunil Amrith, 46, is Professor of History at Yale University in the United States. Born in Kenya to South Indian parents and raised in Singapore, Amrith graduated from the University of Cambridge, where his interest in global environmental and migration histories took shape. His award-winning book explores five centuries of environmental transformation, tracing how colonisation, industrialisation, and human settlement patterns have reshaped the planet.

The Burning Earth

Spanning continents and centuries, The Burning Earth connects episodes such as the conquest of the Americas, British gold mining in South Africa, and the environmental impacts of the World Wars. The British Academy commended Amrith’s research for revealing how human progress has been inseparable from environmental exploitation, and for reframing global history through an ecological lens.

Related GK Facts

• The British Academy Book Prize, established in 2013, honours outstanding non-fiction in the humanities and social sciences.
• Past winners include authors such as Patrick Wright and Kapka Kassabova.
• Sunil Amrith previously won the MacArthur Fellowship (“Genius Grant”) in 2017 for his work on migration and climate history.
• ‘The Burning Earth’ explores 500 years of environmental change through the lens of empire, economy, and ecology.

Exceptional Shortlist Showcasing Global Voices

Other shortlisted authors, each receiving £1,000, included William Dalrymple for The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, Lucy Ash for The Baton and The Cross, Bronwen Everill for Africonomics, Sophie Harman for Sick of It, and Graeme Lawson for Sound Tracks. The British Academy described the 2025 shortlist as a celebration of scholarship that connects the past and present, reinforcing the prize’s mission to highlight research-driven writing that shapes public understanding of the world.