Welcome to Dr. Stefan Lueder

The South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Stefan Lueder as Assistant Professor (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter) in the Department of History, joining Prof. Dr. Kama Maclean’s working group. Dr. Lueder’s multidisciplinary expertise bridges regional and global history, informed by political sciences and sociology, as well as media and cultural studies, positioning him to advance innovative scholarship on South Asia’s histories.
Dr. Lueder earned his PhD from Humboldt University Berlin in 2024, with the doctoral thesis Staatsbildung und Legitimation im Himalaya (“State Formation and Legitimation in the Himalayas”), which was published Open Access by SpringerNature in 2024. His work on 19th-century Gorkha elite discourses and practices of legitimization reveals the Himalayan region’s understudied regional and global entanglements, challenging historiographical narratives of isolation. This research synergizes with SAI’s focus on transcultural dynamics in South Asia.
Before joining SAI, Stefan honed interdisciplinary coordination skills as a project lead and communications specialist at Marburg and Giessen universities, demonstrating the capacity to bridge academic and public engagement.
Dr. Lueder will expand investigations into Himalayan and South Asian intellectual history while teaching the proseminar “Die unsichtbaren Fäden der Macht - Legitimation in der Geschichte Südasiens” (“The Invisible Threads of Power: Legitimation in South Asian History”). His appointment strengthens SAI’s commitment to globally inflected regional studies.