I am a historian of colonial South Asia, with particular interest in the social history of technology.
My monograph Tracks of Change: Railways and Everyday Life in Colonial India (Cambridge, 2015) explores how railway technology, travel, and infrastructure became increasingly woven into everyday life in colonial India, how people negotiated with the growing presence of railways, and how this process has shaped India's history
My current book project Imprimatur, Mediator, and Adversary: Press, Public and State in India, 1780-2023 examines the long-term triangular relationship between newspaper press, the colonial and postcolonial state, and a broader public as it has developed in India over two centuries. Instead of structuring state–press relations through the dichotomies of power versus freedom and/or surveillance versus sedition, it imagines it as one in which newspapers served simultaneously as imprimaturs, mediators, and adversaries in relation to the state.
Jun 10, 2023 11:20 am UTC| Insights & Views Life
A devastating rail crash that left almost 300 people dead has refocused international attention on the importance of railways in the lives of Indians. Indeed, to many Western observers, images of men and women crammed...
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