Purnima Dhavan is an early modernist who researches the social and cultural history of early modern South Asia, 1500-1800. She teaches classes on subjects ranging from South Asian history and the Mughal Empire to Environmental History. She has an adjunct affiliation with the Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures Department and is a member of the faculty at the South Asia Center in the Jackson School of International Studies. Dhavan's book projects include When Sparrows Became Hawks: the Making of Khalsa Martial Tradition and Vali Dakhani and the Early Rektah Networks: Sharing Poetry's Pleasures, co-authored with Heidi Pauwels.

As a 2026 Summer Faculty Fellow, Dhavan will research "The Politics of Resilience: Environmental Change, Labor, and Precarity in the Upper Indus Vally, 1580-1720." She uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine how the lives of peasants and artisans in premodern South Asia were transformed by an early wave of globalized trade between 1580-1720. She studies how their approach to wages, work, and life conditions helped to shape government policy and secure their rights to natural resources and just conditions.