Rajan Gurukkal (born 16 May 1948) is a leading Indian social scientist,[1] historian, professor and writer.[2] He has written many books and articles on different topics.[2] He has also received awards for his works.[2]
Gurukkal is generally considered as left-of-centre historian by political analysts.[3]
Biography
Puthen Madathil Rajan Gurukkal was born on 15 May 1948 in a northern Kerala village called Kariyad near Mahe in the Kannur District of India.[2] He did his schooling first in his family school at Kuruvattur in the Kozhikode District, and subsequently in Kariyad Nambiar's Upper Primary School and Ramavilasam Secondary School. Joined Government College, Madappally and Government Brennen College, Thalassery for his graduation. He received a postgraduate degree in history from the University of Calicut in 1972, with first class and first rank from the University, after which he took up teaching at the Union Christian College at Aluva in Kerala.[4] Later he completed his MPhil in 1978 and PhD in 1985 in historical socio-economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.[2] Then became a faculty of Centre for Historical Studies, JNU
He was a visiting faculty briefly at Humboldt University(1987) and at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociale, Paris (2006) and lectured at several Universities in the country as well as abroad such as Humboldt, Leipzig, Berlin, Heidelberg, Tübingen and Ruhr (Germany); EHESS, Paris; and
CIRAD, Montpellier (France); Toronto and Kingston (Canada); Manchester, Glasgow, Reading, Westminster and SOAS (UK); Shanghai (China); Tokyo, Taisho
and Toyo Bunko (Japan); Central European University, Budapest (Hungary). He has worked on different and several important posts such as the dean of faculty, member of the academic council, senate and syndicate of a few universities and social science research institutes and others. Former Vice-Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, India.[2][5] He was Sundararajan Visiting Professor at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore during 2012-2016. [6]
He currently serves as the Vice-Chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council.
Career
Gurukkal began his career as a junior lecturer at Union Christian College, Aluva in 1972 as soon as he finished his postgraduation.[4] After completing his doctoral education, he joined as the teaching faculty at the Centre for Historical Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University for some time before taking up the chair of Professor and Director, School of Social Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala in 1988.[7] He took up the position at Mahatma Gandhi University upon the invitation of noted Kannada writer and the then University Vice-Chancellor U. R. Ananthamurthy.[citation needed]
Literary career
He has written five books in Malayalam and six books in English, on the topic of Socio-economic, cultural history of Kerala, structural anthropology, historical sociology, and human ecology of the Southern Western Ghats. He has about 150 research articles in the national and international Journals besides many articles in various magazines and newspapers on current issues.[2]
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