Toynbee Prize Foundation names Poorvi Bellur as new Executive Director

The Toynbee Prize Foundation (TPF) is excited to announce the appointment of Poorvi Bellur as the new Executive Director.

Poorvi is from Mumbai, India and is currently a PhD candidate in Global History at Princeton University. She studies global anticolonial solidarities and conceptions of imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a focus on South Asia and Egypt. Her research broadly deals with the construct of political and cultural “solidarity” in the context of the Global South, and the modern historical genealogy of the concept. She holds an MPhil in World History from the University of Cambridge. Her master’s thesis focused on the itinerant British agitator Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and the networks of anticolonial intellectual exchange he navigated from the 1880’s to the interwar period. Outside of her research, Poorvi is interested in critically examining historical pedagogy and widening access to higher education. She is involved with initiatives such as Princeton’s Global History Lab and the Emma Bloomberg Center for Access and Opportunity. 

Poorvi Bellur replaces Dr. Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz, who has held the position since 2019. She will be taking up a new postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University's Weatherhead East Asian Institute and we wish her all the best in this role and in her many other research activities.

The Toynbee Prize Foundation was founded in 1987. It awards the Toynbee Prize, which is granted every other year to recognize outstanding work in global history.