The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science is excited to announce its new Max Planck Research Group "Astral Sciences in Trans-Regional Asia" (ASTRA). The group, led by historian and philosopher of mathematics Anuj Misra, will study the transmission, translocation, and transcreation of astral knowledge across space and time in Asian discourses. By examining the kinetics of astral learning across Asia, the group highlights the complex and ever-changing relationship between society and science from multilateral perspectives.

Anuj Misra is a historian and philosopher of mathematics specializing in the study of pre-modern Islamicate and Sanskrit astronomy. He has recently completed the project "Changing Episteme in Early Modern Sanskrit Astronomy" (CEEMSA) as a Gerda Henkel Research Fellow at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies (CCRS), University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Misra obtained his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and has previously been a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the CCRS where he successfully completed his project "Early Modern Exchanges in Sanskrit Astral Sciences" (EMESAS). He is also an alumnus of the MPIWG, having been a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow in Department I "Structural Changes in Systems of Knowledge" in 2018–19.

Further details about the group will be announced over the course of 2024.