Arun Asokan

Arun Asokan (aliter Arun Ashokan) is a historian specializing in the history of mathematics in premodern India. He received his PhD in Regional Studies from the University of Hyderabad in 2019. In 2023, he completed his postdoctoral research at the Chair of History and Philosophy of Mathematical Sciences at ETH Zurich, contributing to the project The History of Vernacular Mathematics in Medieval South India (Kerala and Tamil Nadu, ninth to sixteenth centuries), with a focus on the late medieval Malayalam mathematical treatise Kaṇakkatikāram.

His current research project Thingking: A History of Material-Related Mathematical Knowledge in India studies the historical formation of material-related calculations in premodern India (ninth–eighteenth centuries). In this project, he develops a theoretical framework termed “Thingking” to investigate the ontology of mathematical knowledge formation. The project examines and demonstrates the intricate networks of relationships between human actions (motions and affects) and nonhuman dynamics (forces, properties, and affordances) in the formation and transformation of mathematical knowledge—numbers, measures, procedures, and rules—related to the computation of paddy, rice, gold, wood, and land in Indian mathematical treatises.

At the MPIWG, he is a member of the Max Planck Research Group "Astral Sciences in Trans-Regional Asia" (ASTRA), where he studies the Performative Formation of Knowledge through Human–Nonhuman Interactions in Premodern Indian Mathematical Practices.

Arun is the recipient of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Seal of Excellence Award from the European Commission in 2026 for his outstanding research project on the history of premodern mathematics.