Research

What was it like fighting for the British at a time when the struggle for India’s freedom from British rule was at its most incendiary? 

I am a literary and cultural historian working on conflict and empire. I contribute to our understanding of global war from the perspective of the colonised.

My first book, India in the Second World War: An Emotional History, (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2023) recovers and assesses an emotional history of undivided India during the Second World War. Here, alongside photographs, I study letters, memoirs, political philosophy and literary texts in Bengali and English languages to reveal the complexities of Indian war emotions.

My current research project looks at the 1943 Bengal Famine, investigating literary and visual representations of food deprivation in colonised India during war. It also examines whether our knowledge of past hunger can lead to new ways of understanding food inequalities in the world today. 

I am a public historian. I speak regularly to public audiences at the British Library, Imperial War Museums, art galleries and charities. I have been an adviser for BBC Radio 4 programmes, the BBC historical drama ‘World on Fire’, and Second World War computer games. I have been interviewed on the BBC Asian Network, and featured on Channel Five and National Geographic documentaries. I have also co-convened the Teaching Empire and War workshop series for British schoolchildren.

Read my academic CV here.