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Sana Aiyar is an Associate Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research and teaching interests focus on regional and transnational history, particularly in relation to South Asia and South Asian diasporas. Aiyar's work includes an exploration of colonial and postcolonial politics and society in the Indian Ocean region. She is the author of "Indians in Kenya: Politics of the Diaspora" (Harvard University Press, 2015), which investigates the dynamics of politics, migration, diaspora, race, and anticolonial nationalism among South Asians in Kenya from 1895 to 1968. She is also preparing a forthcoming book titled "Burma’s South Asian Past: Sacred Geographies and Political Communities" (Cambridge University Press), which aims to uncover the interconnected histories of Burma and India during the colonial period and the rise of Hindu and Buddhist nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s. Aiyar is also the research director for the South Asia Institute, which creates public history exhibitions that display the extensive connections MIT has had with South Asia since 1880. Aiyar has been recognized with the 2023 Great Dome Award from the MIT Alumni Society and has previously held the position of Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, as well as being an assistant professor of South Asian history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before joining MIT in 2013.