Yale's Sunil Amrith, a distinguished scholar of human migration and global environmental history, was recently named to the 2026 class of "Great Immigrants, Great Americans" by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Amrith, who is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and director of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, was among 25 scientists, artists, business leaders, and athletes to receive the award this year. He has a secondary appointment at Yale School of the Environment and is vice provost for international affairs at Yale.
Born in Nairobi, Kenya to Indian parents, Amrith spent his childhood in Singapore. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in 2005. He then taught at the University of London for a decade before moving to the United States in 2015.
The "Great Immigrants, Great Americans" initiative honors naturalized citizens of the United States who have made important contributions to American society, democracy, and culture. The awards have honored more than 775 naturalized citizens since 2006.
The new honorees - a group that also includes Hernan Diaz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author; Jane Fraser, chair and CEO of Citi; Gabriela Hearst, founder of her eponymous fashion house; and Omar M. Yaghi, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry - were recognized with a full-page ad in The New York Times on July 4.
Amrith's work explores migration in South and Southeast Asia, including its role in shaping contemporary social and cultural dynamics and its relationship to environmental change.
Before becoming director of the MacMillan Center, he served as chair of the center's Council on South Asian Studies, leading strategic planning to promote faculty and student research and advance the council's global reputation. Before joining Yale in 2020, he was on the faculty at Harvard University, where he was co-director of the Joint Center for History and Economics and interim director of the Mahindra Humanities Center.
He is the author of several books, including "The Burning Earth," which was the winner of the British Academy Book Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and "Crossing the Bay of Bengal," which received the American Historical Association's John F. Richards Prize. He has also received a MacArthur Fellowship, the Toynbee Prize, the Fukuoka Academic Prize, and the Dr. A. H. Heineken Prize for History. In 2024, he was elected an International Fellow of the British Academy.
As vice provost at Yale, Amrith coordinates with senior leaders, faculty, and staff to advance university research on issues of global importance, educate students for international leadership and citizenship, and coordinate partnerships that benefit communities around the world.
Previous recipients of the "Great Immigrants, Great Americans" honor include Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, actors Pedro Pascal, Helen Mirren, and Steven Yeun, tennis greats Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova, singers Abbas (Bas) Hamad and Alanis Morissette, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
Last year's cohort of "Great Immigrants, Great Americans" honorees included two other members of the Yale faculty: Priyamvada Natarajan, whose research has deepened the understanding of black holes and dark matter, and Akiko Iwasaki, who has made landmark discoveries into how the immune system defends against viruses.
