Dr. Ghosh is a leading author of fiction. His novels recount historical events from a global perspective. Based on detailed archival research and extensive linguistic knowledge, Dr. Ghosh excels in bringing alive global phenomena such as the Opium Wars from the point of view of all concerned: Indian soldiers working for the British, Sri Lankan merchants, British and Dutch traders, Indian farmers forced to grow opium, and Chinese government officials, just to name a few. His most recent non-fiction work argues that to address global climate change, we need literature that helps us imagine seemingly impossible futures but that are in fact, very possible. In this public lecture Dr. Ghosh will be developing these ideas further by reflecting on how to give voice to the non-human such as plants, animals, rivers and oceans. As such, Dr. Ghosh addresses global issues, literary scholarship, linguistic research, science and technology interactions and global history, all of which are cornerstones of research and teaching at FASoS.

^{Dr. Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and The Ibis Trilogy, consisting of Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire. His most recent book, The Great Derangement; Climate Change and the Unthinkable, a work of non-fiction, appeared in 2016.
Full biography Amitav Ghosh}

^{* Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)}