Manan Ahmed, Associate Professor, is a historian of South Asia and the littoral western Indian Ocean world from 1000-1800 CE. His areas of specialization include intellectual history in South and Southeast Asia; critical philosophy of history, colonial and anti-colonial thought. He is interested in how modern and pre-modern historical narratives create understandings of places, communities, and intellectual genealogies for their readers.

His first monograph, A Book of Conquest: Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia (Harvard University Press, 2016), is on the intellectual life of an early thirteenth-century history Chachnama. His second monograph, The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India (Harvard University Press, 2020; pbk, 2023; Folio Books Pakistan, 2023) is a concept-history of “Hindustan,” focusing specifically on the work of the seventeenth century Deccan historian Firishta (fl. 1570-1620). The Loss of Hindustan was shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize 2021. His third monograph, Disrupted City: Walking the Pathways of Memory and History in Lahore (The New Press, 2024) is a history of Pakistan’s cultural and intellectual capital, Lahore, and a meditation on textual and material histories of the place. It combines ethnography, oral histories and deep archival work, covering over a thousand years of this pivotal city. His current book project is on the history of Area Studies, Data Sciences and A.I. as knowledge system projects in the history of colonization and decolonization.

At Columbia, he is a member of Columbia's Center for Study of Ethnicity and Race, Center for the Study of Muslim Societies, and Committee on Global Thought. He is a Senior Editor at Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. He is on the Editorial Board for the journals Philological Encounters, South Asian Studies, and Al-'Usur Al-Wusta: The Journal of Middle East Medievalist.