Indian-Origin Historian Mahmood Kooria Wins Rs 1.26 Cr Philip Leverhulme Prize
Dr Mahmood Kooria, an Indian-origin historian based at the University of Edinburgh, has been named one of the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize winners for 2026. The award, conferred annually by The Leverhulme Trust, recognises outstanding early-career scholars whose work has already commanded international acclaim and whose future research holds exceptional promise.
The prize, worth £100,000 (approximately ₹1.26 crore), is among the most coveted academic accolades in the United Kingdom. Named in honour of the third Viscount Leverhulme—grandson of the Trust’s founder, William Lever—the scheme is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary. Out of more than 400 competitive nominations submitted across the country this year, the Trust selected 30 academics across six subject areas: Biological Sciences, History, Law, Mathematics and Statistics, Philosophy and Theology, and Sociology and Social Policy.
Dr Kooria, who serves as a Lecturer in the History of the Indian Ocean World at Edinburgh’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology, was selected as one of the five history laureates. His award highlights his pioneering contributions to premodern Indian Ocean history, the global evolution of legal systems, Islamic intellectual traditions, matrilineal-matriarchal communities, Afro-Asian historical connections, and manuscript cultures.
Born and raised in Malappuram, Kerala, Dr Kooria’s academic journey began in India before expanding globally. He completed his undergraduate studies at Darul Huda Islamic University and the University of Calicut before moving to New Delhi for higher education at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). At JNU, he earned a Master’s degree in Ancient Indian History and an MPhil combining history and landscape archaeology. It was during his time in Delhi that his interest in Indian Ocean histories took firm root. He later moved to the Netherlands, completing his PhD in Global History at the Leiden University Institute for History in 2016.
Before joining the faculty at the University of Edinburgh in December 2023, Dr Kooria amassed an impressive breadth of international research and teaching experience. He held academic positions across several institutions, including the University of Bergen in Norway, Ashoka University in India, and the State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah in Jakarta, Indonesia. He also conducted research as a joint fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), the African Studies Centre Leiden (ASCL), and the Netherlands Institute in Morocco (NIMAR), supported by competitive research grants from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in New York.
This latest achievement adds to a growing list of major international honours for the academic. In November 2024, Dr Kooria was awarded the Infosys Prize in Humanities and Social Sciences by the Infosys Science Foundation in Bengaluru. That award recognised his seminal work on maritime Islam and the role of Islamic law in shaping economic, political, and cultural dynamics across the Indian Ocean littorals, with a particular focus on historical Kerala.
The £100,000 grant provided by the Leverhulme Trust can be used flexibly to advance a winner’s research. For Dr Kooria, the funding will provide dedicated research time and travel capital to complete a forthcoming book on matrilineal Muslim communities across the Indian Ocean and to progress his research on African jurists and intellectuals in medieval Asia.
Reflecting on the prize, Dr Kooria noted that the award would enable targeted research visits to primary archival sites across South and Southeast Asia. “For the project on African intellectuals in Asia, I plan to visit relevant sites in India, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, where Afro-descendant communities continue to engage with these historical legacies,” he explained.
He added that the travel will lay the groundwork for a broader, long-term initiative: “Such travel would also help me develop collaborative networks for my long-term project on digitised manuscript collections in the Indian Ocean world. Direct engagement with institutions and scholars in these places, together with additional trips to Kenya and Tanzania, would help establish a consortium, facilitate sustained collaboration and explore funding opportunities beyond the UK and Europe.”
Professor Anna Vignoles, Director of the Leverhulme Trust, praised the standard of this year’s cohort, highlighting how selecting thirty winners from hundreds of high-calibre submissions remains a formidable task. The School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh also extended its warmest congratulations to Dr Kooria, celebrating his continued success in reshaping how global, legal, and maritime histories are understood today.
