Rajan Gurukkal

Founder Professor & Director, Interdisciplinary School of Social Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, (1990-2008) and Vice Chancellor of the same University (2008–2012), Rajan Gurukkal PM was Invited Professor at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociale, Paris (2006), and Soundararajan Visiting Professor, Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (2012-2017).
Currently he is Vice Chairman, Kerala State Higher Education Council.
He has taught at Union Christian College, Aluva (1972-88) and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (1988-1990).
He has been in the Executive Committee of the World Association of Semioticians since 2004.
He was a member in a few national Councils like ICHR and Indian National Science Academy, and a member of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, Ministry of Environment and Forest, Government of India since 2015.
Gurukkal is a historian and social scientist famed for critical historiography.
He wrote history beyond the discipline as a pioneering researcher of interdisciplinary perspective.
His specialisations in interdisciplinary fields such as social theory, historical human ecology, human geography, philosophy of science, social semiotics, Dravidian poetics, and theory of knowledge production vouch for it.
He has authored eleven books mostly brought out mostly by Oxford University Press and over 160 research articles mainly in reputed Journals in history and Social Sciences.
His latest books are: Rethinking Classical Indo-Roman Trade, Oxford University Press, 2015; History and Theory of Knowledge Production, Oxford University Press, 2019.
He has authored a couple of widely cited articles in Pedagogical Science too.
Gurukkal’s studies in early South Indian social formations, archaeology of agro-pastoral heroism, mythical and legendary aspects of a Brahmin chronicle, beginnings of slavery in Kerala, early trade networks, circulation of religious communities through kinship network of maritime traders, exchange of cultures through trade networks; anthropology of early forms of exchange and political economy of maritime trade, beginnings of the caste system in Kerala are being cited by specialists all over the world.
Gurukkal has lectured at several Universities in the Country as well as abroad such as Humboldt, Leipzig, Berlin, Heidelberg, Tubingen and RUHR (Germany); EHESS, Paris and CIRAD, Montpellier (France); Toronto and Kingston (Canada); Glasgow, Manchester, Oxford, SOAS, Reading, Westminister (UK); Shanghai (China); Tokyo, Taisho, and Toyobungo (Japan); Central European University, Budapest (Hungary)