University Of Hyderabad’s Dr Salah Punathil Awarded Max Planck Grant
Dr Salah Punathil, a faculty member at the Centre for Regional Studies, University of Hyderabad, has been awarded the prestigious Max Planck Partner Group research grant. The five-year grant, awarded by the Max Planck Society, supports collaborative research between early-career scholars abroad and their counterparts at Max Planck Institutes in Germany. The initiative aims to strengthen international scientific networks through long-term partnerships.
Dr Punathil, a native of Kerala’s Kozhikode, will lead a research project titled ‘Biometric Identification and Practices of Citizenship in India’, hosted jointly by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle and the University of Hyderabad. He will work in close collaboration with Professor Ursula Rao, Director of the Department ‘Anthropology of Politics and Governance’ at the Max Planck Institute, who will serve as the host collaborator in Germany.
The Max Planck Partner Group Programme is a globally respected initiative supporting cutting-edge research in innovative and socially relevant fields. Currently, there are 88 active Partner Groups worldwide. These groups are led by outstanding scholars who, after conducting research at a Max Planck Institute, return to their home countries to continue academic collaboration.
Dr Punathil, a trained sociologist and alumnus of Farook College (Calicut University), University of Hyderabad and Jawaharlal Nehru University, has a notable academic background. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow (2018–2020) at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and served as a DAAD Guest Professor at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), University of Göttingen, from November 2023 to January 2024. His current research project, ‘Racial Capitalism, Sexuality and Labour: Experience of Young North East Women in the Spa Industry in Hyderabad, India’, further reflects his engagement with pressing contemporary issues.
His scholarly interests include ethnic violence, migration, borderlands, citizenship, and the intersection of archives and ethnography. His acclaimed book, Interrogating Communalism: Violence, Citizenship and Minorities in South India, was published by Routledge in 2019. Dr Punathil has published widely in reputed journals such as Citizenship Studies, History and Anthropology, South Asia Research, and Contributions to Indian Sociology.
He has received the M. N. Srinivas Award for Young Indian Sociologists in 2015 and the Chancellor’s Award for Best Faculty at the University of Hyderabad, underlining his academic excellence and commitment to research. The grant further positions both Dr Punathil and the University of Hyderabad as vital contributors to international academic discourse.
