Aditya Balasubramanian

Aditya Balasubramanian is a Senior Lecturer in the School of History at the Australian National University (ANU), College of Arts and Social Sciences (CASS). He serves as Deputy Director of ANU's Center for Environmental History and co-founded the ANU Capitalism Studies Network. During 2025-2028, he holds an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) Fellowship.

His educational background includes an AB from Harvard College and an MPhil and PhD from Trinity College, Cambridge.

Dr. Balasubramanian's research focuses on the history of modern South and Southeast Asia, with particular emphasis on political economy, environmental history, and the history of economic thought. His work explores material histories of consumption and culture, energy systems, and international history. He investigates how decolonization shaped economic policies and environmental management in postcolonial India.

His publications reveal a trajectory from political economic history (e.g., his book on the Swatantra Party) toward environmental history, particularly in his current DECRA project on roadbuilding and transport. Key themes include the interplay between state formation, development, and ecological change in South Asia, with recurring analyses of famine, anticorruption, and neoliberalism.

His scholarly contributions have been recognized through several honors:

• Shortlisted for the 2022 Elder Prize in the Social Sciences (American Institute of Indian Studies)
• Shortlisted for the 2024 W.K. Hancock Prize (Australian Historical Association)
• Longlisted for the 2024 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Prize (New India Foundation)

As a supervisor, he is registered to guide research students. His grant portfolio includes an active DECRA Fellowship (2025-2028) for "Roads and Road Transport in India: An Environmental and Economic History" and a completed project (2023) on "Vehicles to Economic Development, Vehicles of Ecological Degradation?".

He actively contributes to institutional research infrastructure as Deputy Director of the Center for Environmental History, co-founder of the Capitalism Studies Network, and creator of the Archives of Economic Life in South and Southeast Asia, which serves as a digital repository for economic history sources.