A triple gold medalist in History, Dr.Sebastian Joseph passed his M.A in History from the University of Kerala with first class and first rank. He secured the highest marks in B.A History from M.G University and topped the list of candidates in all the three Universities in Kerala and secured State Merit Scholarship. The specialisation in forest history taken for his M.Phil was carried forward in to his PhD, which was later awarded a PHDD Fellowship by the KCHR. Recently, he has been awarded the Charles Wallace Grant of the British Council for academic visit to England. After his joining the college, he has initiated a number of programmes like the Symbiosis, Inter-lecture series and archiving of oral testimonies related to the college and co scripted the signature film on the college, U-Scapes. He has edited the college
Journal, Discourses and the proceedings journal of the UGC National Seminar, Environmental History: Issues in Prudence and Profligacy. He has presented a number of papers as resource person on environmental history, oral history, film history and family history in conferences including Indian History Congress, South Indian History Congress and various International and National Seminars. He is a resource person for the refresher course in history offered by the UGC Academic Staff Colleges of the Universities of Calicut and Kannur . He has proposed syllabi in environmental history for M.G University, Kerala University and Sree Sankaracharya University. He holds membership in KCHR and South Indian History Congress. He is the coordinator of the open course programme in Environmental History. The courses he currently handles for P.G include, Approaches to History, Agriculture, Crafts Production and Exchange in India from c. AD l000 to 1800 , History and Social Theory and Landmarks in Indian Environmental History. An approved Research Guide in History (M.G University) he currently supervises six and open to potential students at PhD level on topics in environmental and oral history. He coordinates the PhD course work programme in social sciences.
Books
Cochin forests and the British: A case of techno-ecological imperialism, Primus Publications, New Delhi( Won the Fifth Historia Award for the best researched work on Modern Kerala History)
An article on St. Chavara Kuriakose Elias, ‘The Great Chavarian Social Revolution:Mapping signposts of social revolution in Kerala engineered by St. Chavara’ in the book, Faces of Social Reform in Kerala,(Essays in honour of Prof. S. Sivadasan),Trivandrum