Tansen Sen is Professor of History; the Director of the Center for Global Asia at NYU Shanghai; and Associated Full Professor, Department of History, NYU. He is the author of Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400 (2003; 2016) and India, China, and the World: A Connected History (2017; 2018). He has edited Buddhism Across Asia (2014), and co-edited (with Burkhard Schnepel) Travelling Pasts: The Politics of Cultural Heritage in the Indian Ocean World (2019) and (with Brian Tsui) Beyond Pan-Asianism: Connecting China and India, 1840s–1960s (2021). With Adhira Mangalagiri he has co-edited a special issue of the International Journal of Asian Studies (July 2022) on “methods in China-India studies.” He is currently working on a book about Zheng He’s maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century, a monograph on Jawaharlal Nehru and China, and co-editing (with Engseng Ho) the Cambridge History of the Indian Ocean, volume 1.

He has done extensive research in India, China, Japan, and Singapore with grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Japan Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore), and Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton). He was the founding head of the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Center in Singapore and served on the Governing Board of the Nalanda University, India.

Read more about Sen in From India to China, Tansen Sen’s Journey between Two Nations.

Education

• PhD
  University of Pennsylvania
• MA
  Peking University