Naveen Kanalu Ramamurthy is a senior lecturer at EHESS, where he holds the chair. Pour une histoire institutionnelle de l'Empire moghol : Droit, pouvoir et économie politique en Asie du Sud (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles). He holds a doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is a statutory member of the Centre de recherches historiques (CRH).
His research focuses on the institutional history of Hanafi law and its modes of cohabitation with power in Mughal India. He draws on Arabic manuscripts, administrative, legal and tax archives, and correspondence in Persian and Indian vernacular languages. He proposes to study Islamic legal institutions and the use of Hanafi contract law in order to situate Mughal administrative procedures in a trans-imperial space of circulation of knowledge and know-how between the Middle East, Central Asia and India over the long term (12th-18th centuries).
His publications focus on Hanafi legal dogma in Muslim India, British colonial interpretations of law and European representations of the Mughals. He is also interested in Islamic documentary forms and chancery practices, Persian-speaking culture in vernacular sociolinguistic contexts, and Arab-Muslim intellectual history in pre-colonial India.
Naveen Kanalu Ramamurthy is the recipient of the Collège de France Prize for Young Researchers in 2023.