Handbook on Urban History of Early India

Aloka Parasher Sen is a historian who graduated from the Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University, and obtained her Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has been Professor of History at the University of Hyderabad between 1979-2018, where she was also Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sanskrit Studies, 2018-2023.

In addition to her teaching career, Parasher Sen has also undertaken numerous academic assignments abroad, including being a DAAD Fellow at the Sudasien Institut, Universitat Heidelberg, Germany, Fulbright Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, the first occupant of the Rotating Chair in Indian Studies at the Sudasien Institut, Universitat Heidelberg, Germany and the first occupant of the Saroj and Prem Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Polity and Society at the Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Canada.

Her research interests include social history of early India, namely, early Indian attitudes towards foreigners, tribes and excluded castes and the social, economic, cultural, and religious history and archeology of the Deccan region. Some of her major publications are: Mlecchas in Early India, (Munishram Manoharlal,1991, Rpt. 2023), Social and Economic History of the Deccan, Some Interpretations (Manohar, 1993, Rpt. 2019), Subordinate and Marginal Groups in Early India up to 1500 AD (OUP, 2004, 2nd Paperback edition 2007), Religion and Modernity in India, (with Sekhar Bandhyopadhyaya) (OUP 2016), Settlement and Local Histories of the Deccan (Manohar 2020), Seeking History through her Source, South of the Vindhyas (Orient Blackswan 2022), Gender Religion and Local History - The Early Deccan (Primus 2023) [This was awarded Professor Annapurna Chattopadhyaya Award for the best book on Ancient India with a Regional perspective in 2023], Conversations with the Animate ’Other’ Historical Representations of Human non-Human Interaction in India (Bloomsbury 2023) among others.