We are delighted to announce that Professor Nayanjot Lahiri (Ashoka University) will deliver the keynote address at the 27th International Conference of the European Association for South Asian Archaeology and Art (EASAA 2026), which will take place at Ghent University from 6 to 10 July 2026.
Professor Lahiri is Professor of History at Ashoka University and one of the most distinguished scholars of South Asian early history and archaeology. Her work has been instrumental in shaping contemporary understandings of South Asia’s ancient pasts and its archaeological practices.
She is the author of a wide-ranging and influential body of scholarship, including Pre-Ahom Assam (1991); The Archaeology of Indian Trade Routes (1992); Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization Was Discovered (2005); Marshalling the Past: Ancient India and Its Modern Histories (2012); Ashoka in Ancient India (2015); Monuments Matter: India’s Archaeological Heritage Since Independence (2017); Time Pieces–A Whistle-Stop Tour of Ancient India (2018); Archaeology and the Public Purpose: Writings on and by M.N. Deshpande (2021); and Searching for Ashoka (2023). She is also co-author of Copper and Its Alloys in Ancient India (1996), editor of The Decline and Fall of the Indus Civilization (2000), and co-editor of Ancient India: New Research (2009) and Buddhism in Asia: Revival and Reinvention (2016).
Professor Lahiri was awarded the Infosys Prize 2013 in Humanities–Archaeology, and her book Ashoka in Ancient India received the 2016 John F. Richards Prize from the American Historical Association for the best book in South Asian history.
We are honoured to welcome Professor Lahiri as our keynote speaker and look forward to welcoming her in Ghent.
Further details on her keynote lecture will follow in due course on the website of the conference: https://easaa2026.ugent.be/en.
