Sikandar M. Kumar

Sikandar M. Kumar is a Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Michigan. His work focuses on colonial and postcolonial South Asia and the British Empire, particularly exploring democratic imagining and moral belonging in 19th–20th century North India. He employs innovative reading practices to analyze vernacular literature’s role in shaping political modernity.

He holds the Sydney Fine Prize for outstanding teaching (2019) and was supported by the Rackham Humanities Dissertation Fellowship. During 2024–25, he teaches courses on 'Empires and Nations in South Asia' and 'The Rise and Fall of the British Empire.' His current project revises his PhD dissertation into a book manuscript titled *The Democratic Commons: Vernacular Genealogies of Political Modernity in North India*.