At a time when talk of “climate migration” and “climate refugees” reverberates through media and policy discussions, this lecture will ask who can, and who can’t, move in response to escalating climate risk. Drawing on my two decades of research in South and Southeast Asia, the lecture will argue that the search for environmental justice demands that we contend with histories of migration and with the legacies of border-making.
Sunil Amrith is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History, and current chair of the South Asian Studies Council at Yale University. His most recent book is Unruly Waters, a history of the struggle to understand and control the monsoon in modern South Asia. Amrith is the recipient of the 2022 A.H. Heineken Prize for History, a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship, and the 2016 Infosys Prize in Humanities.
