Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Santhosh Abraham

Associate Professor

  • Ph.D.,History, University of Hyderabad, 2008
  • M.Phil.,History, University of Hyderabad, 2003
  • M.A.,History, University of Calicut, 2002
  • abraham[at]iitm[.]ac[.]in
  • Colonial Animal Histories
  • Legal and Medical History
  • Colonial Medicine, Psychiatry, Asylums
  • Plantation Labour, Coolies and Child Labour
  • Department of Humanities and Social Sciences – 2012 –  Current
    Indian Institute of Technology Madras
  • Department of Humanities and Social Science  – 2018 (January – December)
    Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad (On Deputation)
  • Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad – 2010 – 2012
  • Department of History, University of Hyderabad   –  2009 -2010
  • History of the Modern World
  • Indian National Movement
  • Law and Society & Modern India
  • Ancient Civilizations
  • History of Science and Technology
  • Contemporary India (IIT Palakkad)
  • International Relations (IIT Palakkad)
  • Approaches to World History (University of Hyderabad)
  • Colonial Animal History -ICSR, IIT Madras – Exploratory Research (2022-23)
  • Medical Humanities Research Award  –  Wellcome Trust, London (November-January 2015)
  • Medical Humanities Research Award  –  Wellcome Trust, London  (June-July 2014)
  • Medicine and British Empire in South India –   Indian National Science Academy (INSA)  New Delhi
  • Psychiatry and Mental Asylums   -ICSR, IIT Madras – Exploratory Research
  • Colonial Courts, Trials and Conflicts in Early British Malabar  –  ICSR, IIT Madras
  • Visakh M.S – Islamic Traditionalism in a Globalizing World (Awarded in 2020)
  • Suramya T.K – Regulation and Resistance in the Beedi Industry of Malabar (Awarded in 2021)
  • Melody Hmangaimawi – Access to Justice (Awarded in 2026)
  • Mathew Joseph – Cartography in British Malabar (Currently Pursuing).
  • Sreedevi K.C – Colonial Railways (Currently Pursuing).
  • Vardhaman Sai Krishna – Medicine in Princely Hyderabad (Currently Pursuing).
  • Navaneetha P – Colonial Medicine and Epidemics (Currently Pursuing).
  • Anupama Sinha – Shamanism and Traditional Healing Practices (Currently Pursuing).
  • Doel Chakraborty – Women and Colonial Medicine (Currently Pursuing).
  • Poornima Nair- History of Imperial Medicine- Public Health in Occupied Japan (Currently Pursuing).
  • International Advisory Board Member  – South Asia Research (A peer-reviewed International, Multi-disciplinary Journal which covers the History, Politics, Law, Economics, Sociology, Visual culture, Languages and Literature of the countries in South Asia. (Published by Sage Journals International)
    https://journals.sagepub.com/home/sar
  • Sheela Raj Memorial Award for Best Ph.D Thesis in History in the year 2010, University of Hyderabad, 2010.
Published Articles in International / National Journals

  • (2026) Santhosh Abraham and and S.S.Mathew, Child labour as calculated governance: plantation capitalism, colonial bureaucracy, and the narrowing of factory reform in Malabar and the Madras Presidency, 1879. Labor History, Published (Online First). https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2026.2740681

  • (2026) Santhosh Abraham and and S.S.Mathew ‘Patient Labour and gendering cure: occupational and moral therapies in the colonial lunatic asylums of British South India, 1871-1947’, Labor History, https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2026.2699797  (Online First)

  • (2026) Dhiren Swain and Santhosh Abraham, ‘Basti Mediators: Building narrative land histories and incremental archives to challenge state categories of land and resist eviction’, Published (Online First), Dialectical Anthropology, Vol.50, pp. 535-555. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-026-09826-x

  • (2023) Santhosh Abraham and Susy Varughese, ‘Madras Kraals, animal labour and Veterinary Corps: colonising wild elephants in British South India’. Labor History, 65(2), 240–255. https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2268557

  • (2022) Santhosh Abraham and and S.S.Mathew, ‘Becoming Coolies and Supervisors: Continued Indebtedness, coercive intermediaries and new Governmentalities in Colonial South Indian Plantations, 1830-1895’, Labour History, Vol.63, Issue: 2, 2022, pp.279 296.  https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2022.2073343​

  • (2020) Suramya T.K & Santhosh Abraham, ‘Regulation and resistance: Defactorisation in the beedi industry of colonial Malabar, 1937–1941’, Labor History, Vol.61:5-6, pp. 658- 676. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0023656X.2020.1844874

  • (2017) Santhosh Abraham, ‘The Keyi Mappila Muslim Merchants of Tellicherry and the Making of Coastal Cosmopolitanism on the Malabar Coast’,  Asian Review of World Histories , Vol. 5, Issue 2, 2017, pp. 145 -162.  http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/22879811-12340009

  • (2014) Santhosh Abraham, ‘Constructing the ‘Extraordinary Criminals”: Mappila Muslims and Legal Encounters in Early British Colonial Malabar’, Journal of World History, Volume 25, Issue 2-3, 2014, (University of Hawai’i Press), pp. 373 – 395. http://muse.jhu.edu/article/579925

  • (2013) Santhosh Abraham, ‘Formal Writing, Questionnaires and Petitions: Colonial Governance and Law in Early British Malabar’, Indian Historical Review, Vol.40, No.2, December 2013, (Sage International) pp. 285 – 305. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0376983613499681

  • (2011) Santhosh Abraham, ‘Colonial Law in Early British Malabar: Transparent Colonial State and Formality of Practices’, South Asia Research, Vol.31, No.3, November, 2011, pp.249 -264.   http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026272801103100304?journalCode=sara

  • (2011) Santhosh Abraham, ‘The Making of Colonial Law in British India: A Historiographical Analysis’, Indian Law Review, Vol. 3, 2011, pp.116-128.

  • (2011) Santhosh Abraham.,‘Classical Legal Traditions: Some Historiographical Interpretations’, Journal of History and Social Sciences, Vol.2, Issue I, January-June 2011 (Online only).

  • (2011) Santhosh Abraham., ‘Colonialism and the Making of Criminal Categories in British India, NALSAR Law Review, Vol.6, No.2, 2011, pp.151-165.

  • (2010) Santhosh Abraham., ‘The Making of Colonial Law, Discipline and Corruption in British India’, Journal of Indian Law and Society, Vol.2 (Winter), 2010, pp.64-82.

  • (2009) Santhosh Abraham., ‘Making of Jungle Mappilas: Colonial Law and the Construction of Native Criminality in Early British Malabar’, TAPASAM (A Quarterly Journal for Kerala Studies), Vol.V, Issue 1, 2010, pp.118 -140.

  • (2022), Santhosh Abraham, ‘Moments of New Legalities in British Colonial India: A Brief Review’, in Santhosh Abraham and P. Kumar, Indian Legal History: Issues and Perceptions, Tamil Nadu National Law University, 2022, pp. 97-110.
  • (2020) Santhosh Abraham, ‘Mappilas’, in Kate Fleet and Gudrun Kramer (Eds), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol 3, Brill: Leiden, 2020, pp. 118-121.
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_36192
  • (2017), Santhosh Abraham, Culture Summary: Kerala, in  Human Relations Area Files, New Haven, 2017
    http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=aw11-000.
  • (2007) Santhosh Abraham., ‘From Negotiation to the Making of Dominance: Colonial Law in Early British Malabar’ (1792 – 93) in Rattanlal Hangloo and A.Murali (Eds.) New Themes in Indian History: Art, Politics, Gender, Environment and Culture, New Delhi: Black & White, 2007, pp.160-174.
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  • (2022), Santhosh Abraham and P.Kumar (Eds.), Indian Legal History: Issues and Perceptions, Published by Tamil Nadu National Law University, 2022.
  • (2023), Santhosh Abraham, Sojourners, Sultans and Slaves: America and the Indian Ocean in the age of abolition and Empire, by Gunja Sen Gupta and Awam Amkpa, South Asian Diaspora, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2 https://doi.org/10.1080/19438192.2023.2257496
  • (2021) Santhosh Abraham,  Indian Migration and Empire: A Colonial Genealogy of the Modern State​ by Radhika Mongia, South Asia Research, Vol.41, Issue :1, 2021, pp.140-143. https://doi.org/10.1177/0262728020973
  • (2017) Santhosh Abraham, Book Review: Harris Solomon, Metabolic Living: Food, Fat and the Absorption of Illness in India, South Asia Research, Vol.37, Issue:3, pp.359-362. https://doi.org/10.1177/0262728017725978
  • (2025), Santhosh Abraham and S.S.Mathew, ‘From Dwellings to ‘Ageing in Community’: Redefining Elderly Living in Kerala, India’, at the Annual Meeting of the European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, SLSAeu 2025, The Lifespan: Perspectives on Ageing and the Life Course, King’s College London, 4-6 June 2025. 
  • (2024), Santhosh Abraham and Teresa Joshy, ‘Contagious Diseases and Zoonotic Collecting in the Bacteriological Laboratories in British Colonial Madras, 1897-1937′, in the Annual Conference on ‘Zoonotic Collecting: Perspectives from the Humanities, Social Sciences and Life Sciences’ at University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK, 24-25 June, 2024.
  • (2023) Santhosh Abraham and Susy Varughese, Madras Kraals, Veterinary Corps and Ivory Trade: Colonising Wild Elephants in British Colonial South India, Paper presented at the International Workshop on Commodities of Empire, University of York, United Kingdom, 6-7 July, 2023.
  • (2016) Santhosh Abraham, “Making of Madras Coolies: Labour Migration, Legislations and Resistances in Colonial South India’, International Conference on After Slavery? Labour and Migration in the Post-Emancipation World, University of Leeds at Leeds, UK, 27 -28 June 2016.
  • (2015), Recasting and Reimagining the Islamic Law and Jurisprudence: Colonial and Post-colonial Discourses on Muslim Law in Malabar, Kerala, International Conference on Ocean of Law: Intermixed Legal Systems across the Indian Ocean World, Organised by Ledien University, The Netherlands at Leiden, 7-9, December, 2015.
  • (2015) Santhosh Abraham, “Keyi Mappila Muslims of Colonial Malabar: Making of Coastal and Vernacular Cosmopolitan Order”, International Conference on Wild Spaces and Islamic Cosmopolitanism in Asia, Organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, at Singapore, 14-15 January, 2015.
  • (2012) Santhosh Abraham, ‘Jungle Mappilas as Criminal Bandits in Colonial Malabar’ in the Workshop on European Encounters with Islam in Asia, 1500-1800, University of Hawai’i (USA), September 28 – 29, 2012.