Dr Aditya Balasubramanian

Aditya Balasubramanian is a Senior Lecturer in History. His research focuses on various aspects of the history of political economy and environment in modern South Asia. His first book, Toward a Free Economy: Swatantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023), is a history of economic ideas and politics (UK/US link South Asia link). It was shortlisted for the 2022 Elder Prize in the Social Sciences of the American Institute of Indian Studies and the 2024 W.K. Hancock Prize for best first monograph of the Australian Historical Association, and longlisted for the 2024 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Prize of the New India Foundation.

The book was launched in Australia at an event with Melinda Cooper as the inaugural event of the ANU Capitalism Studies Network, in India at an event with Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Rajshree Chandra held by Penguin and Nehru Dialogues, and in the United States at an event with Amy Offner and Sudipta Kaviraj, hosted by the Harvard Center for History and Economics. 

More on the Book:

• Conversations: Bangalore International Center, Bangalore Literature Festival, Center for Civil Society, Scholars in Conversation Blog of the National Law School of India, The Coffee House Experience, Vidpeds with Subodh Mathur  
• Presentations with Response/Q&A: Centre des Sciences Humaines Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, King’s India Institute, University of California, Berkeley
• Podcasts: Arbitrary (National Law School Policy Review), Grand Tamasha, Lekh, Past Imperfect, Puliyabaazi (in Hindi) 
• Reviews: Asian Age/Deccan Herald, Australian Outlook, Business Standard, Hindu BusinessLine, India Business Journal (March 2024), and The Hindu. 
• Press Coverage: DT News, The Hindu, The New Indian Express

He is now pursuing a project titled "Roads and Road Transport in India: An Environmental and Economic History." For this, he received a Small Grants Award from the College of Arts and Social Sciences in 2023 and has been awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award of $477,039 during 2025-2028. Initial thoughts appeared in this post for the Harvard Center for History and Economics' "Visualizing Climate and Loss" blog. He is also pursuing an article project on the chequered and controversial history of eucalyptus in India, for which he received an Australian Studies Institute Visiting Fellowship in 2023. 

At ANU, Aditya teaches "From Moral Philosophy to (Political Economy) to Economics: A History" and has taught "Approaches to History." Along with Professors Will Bateman (Law) and Melinda Cooper (Sociology), he is a cofounder of the ANU Capitalism Studies Network. He is also a Board Member of the South Asia Research Institute. From 2018 to 2024, he coordinated the Archives of Economic Life in South and Southeast Asia website. Aditya's contributions to the print media have appeared in Hindustan Times, India Forum, The Tribune, and Scroll.in.

AB (Harvard College), MPhil, PhD (Trinity College, Cambridge)

history of modern South and Southeast Asia; energy and environmental history; material histories of consumption and culture; history of ideas