SEEMA ALAVI is a professor of history at Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana.

She earned her PhD from Cambridge University, England, and has twice been a Fulbright Scholar and a Smuts Visiting Research Fellow at Cambridge. In 2010, she was at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard as the William Bentinck-Smith Fellow. Dr Alavi specializes in early modern and modern South Asia, with interest in the transformation of the region's legacy from Indo-Persian to one heavily affected by British colonial rule. She has written books on the military, medical and religious histories of India. Her most recent book is the Albert Hourani Award (Honorable Mention) winner Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire from Harvard University Press, USA.