As the interim directorship of Prof. Madhumita Lahiri comes to a close, the Center for South Asian Studies is pleased to announced the return of Prof. Matthew Hull as Center Director. Prof. Hull, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, was previously the director of CSAS from 2021 to 2024. A linguistic and cultural anthropologist, he focuses his research on the nexus of representation, technology, and institutions, especially in the Indian Subcontinent. Prof. Hull has also worked on lotteries and police in contemporary India, and the deployment of American technologies of democracy in urban India from the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Prof. Hull returns to the University of Michigan at the conclusion of a year-long fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, during which he worked on a broad project on corporations as governance institutions, from the English East India Company to contemporary corporations. This work is slated to culminate in a book titled Incorporations: Capitalism and Collective Life.
CSAS would like to express its heartfelt gratitude for Prof. Lahiri's work as Director during the 2024–25 schoolyear and extend a warm welcome back to Prof. Hull.
