Senior Lecturer in Colonial Urban History

Contact Details

Biography

I trained as a historian at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, where I completed an M.A. and an M.Phil., before proceeding to the University of Oxford to undertake a doctorate. My D.Phil. thesis explored the nature of colonial governance and public culture in colonial Bombay during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After holding a Junior Research Fellowship in History at Wolfson College, Oxford, I took up a lectureship in the School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester, where I have taught ever since. I am also a member of the Centre for Urban History, a key research centre within the School.

Research

• Research Interests
• Publications

PhD Supervision

Modern South Asian history: economy, culture and politics from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries; British imperialism in Africa, Australia and Asia; The social history of modern sport. 

Teaching

Undergraduate

• HS1011 Modern Survey 2: The Making of the Modern World
• HS2400 Perceiving the Past seminar group
• HS2235 Cultural History (team taught with Professor David Gentilcore and Dr. Olaf Jensen)
• HS3617 The Making of Modern India, c. 1917-1947

Postgraduate

• HS7207 Colonial Cities in British Asia and Africa, c. 1850-1950

Administrative Responsibilities

• Deputy Director of Research
• MA Urban History Course Director
• Member of School Research Committee
• School International Recruitment Officer

Most Recent Publications

1. ‘Hero, Celebrity and Icon: Sachin Tendulkar and Indian Public Culture’, in Anthony Bateman and Jeffrey Hill (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Cricket (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011), pp. 187-202.
2. ‘From “social reform” to “social service”: civic activism and the urban poor in colonial Bombay, c. 1900-1920’, in Michael Mann and Carey Watt (eds.), Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Post-Colonial South Asia: From Improvement to Development (Anthem Press, London, 2011), pp. 217-38.
3. ‘Consumption, domestic economy and the idea of the ‘middle class’ in late colonial Bombay’ in Douglas Haynes, Tirthankar Roy et al (eds.), Towards a History of Consumption in South Asia (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2009), pp. 108-35. Reprinted in Sanjay Joshi (ed.) Themes in Indian History: The Middle Class in Colonial India (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2010), pp. 132-153.
4. ‘Contestation and Conflict: Workers’ Resistance and the Labour Problem in the Bombay Cotton Mills, c. 1898-1919’, in Prabhu Mahapatra and Marcel van der Linden (eds.), Towards Global History: New Comparisons (Tulika, New Delhi, 2009), pp. 106-27.
5. The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2007)