Sanjay Sharma is a historian at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) where he is an Associate Professor in the School of Liberal Studies. He received his doctorate in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His research interests are in the history of famines in India, notions of philanthropy, and indigenous perceptions and practices of survival during dearth and food shortages. Dr Sharma is the author of Famine, Philanthropy and the Colonial State: North India in the Early Nineteenth Century (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2001) and has published on drought, famine-crime and food security in India and China.