Prof. David Shulman

Prof. David Shulman is an Indologist, poet and peace activist, known for his work on the history of religion in South India, Indian poetics, Tamil Islam, Dravidian linguistics, and Carnatic music. Bilingual in Hebrew and English, he has mastered Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu, and reads Greek, Russian, French, German, Persian, Arabic and Malayalam. He is also a published poet in Hebrew, a literary critic, a cultural anthropologist who has authored/co-authored more than 20 books. Some of his work includes: More than Real: A History of the Imagination in South India (Harvard University Press, 2012); and Tamil: A Biography (Harvard University Press, 2016). He graduated from The Hebrew University in 1971 with a B.A. degree in Islamic History followed by a Doctorate in Tamil and Sanskrit, with a dissertation on 'The Mythology of the Tamil Saiva Talapuranam', at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1976.

Prof. Shulman’s list of Awards include MacArthur Fellowship (1987), Rothschild Prize (2004), The EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture (2010), The Israel Prize (2016) for his research on the literature and culture of southern India. He has also been a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 1988.