We are delighted and proud that the just-announced Infosys Prize has been awarded to two scholars whom we published years before the prize.
Jahnavi Phalkey's Atomic State was acquired, edited, and published by Permanent Black in 2013 and is available in paperback with us. Karuna Mantena's Alibis of Empire was a book we published on a limited license from Princeton University Press. We no longer have legal rights to reprint it, but that doesn't stop us feeling very happy, thrilling in a bit of reflected glory because the Infosys Prizes are big news. This is what their press release says about the two winners, Jahnavi in Humanities and Karuna in Social Sciences:
The Infosys Prize 2023 in Humanities is awarded to Jahnavi Phalkey, Founding Director, Science Gallery Bengaluru, for her brilliant and granular insights into the individual, institutional, and material histories of scientific research in modern India. Her book, The Atomic State, and many articles insightfully braid the global history of science, especially nuclear science, with the anthropology of the postcolonial state to illuminate rich and textured histories of the everyday lives of science in India. Dr. Phalkey’s work has
The Infosys Prize 2023 in Social Sciences is awarded to Karuna Mantena, Professor, Political Science, Columbia University for her groundbreaking research on the theory of imperial rule, and the claim that this late imperial ideology became one of the important factors in the emergence of modern social theory. Prof. Mantena’s book Alibis of Empire and related papers are landmark publications in political theory with implications for all social sciences. Her impactful book helps us understand that the dramatic shift in imperial policy, following the 1857 rebellion in India was not a straightforward reaction to this traumatic event but legitimated by a new ideology of indirect imperial rule that was carefully crafted by the ingenious conceptual work of thinker-administrators such as Henry Maine.
