My current major research interest is in the Second World War in Asia. I am writing an archival and narrative history of India during the Second World War to be published by the Bodley Head/Oxford University Press in 2012.

 

I trained at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. My doctoral work concentrated on the Partition of India, refugee rehabilitation and the creation of the state of Pakistan in 1947. This lead to the publication of my first book, The Great Partition: the Making of India and Pakistan (Yale University Press, 2007) which was widely reviewed in the national and international press, long-listed for the Orwell Award for political writing and won the Gladstone Prize from the Royal Historical Society.

 

My research has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board (Doctoral Award 2001-5), the British Academy (Postdoctoral Fellowship 2005-7) and currently by a major Leverhulme Research Grant (2010-2013).

 

I joined Royal Holloway as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in 2005 after lecturing at the Department of History at Edinburgh University and currently convene courses on postcolonial South Asia and Empire and Decolonisation at Royal Holloway as well as contributing to courses on International Relations and Democracy and supervising doctoral students.

 

I lectured at Bilgi University for the Open Society Institute Summer School in Istanbul in 2007 and also participated in the National History Center’s Decolonization seminar in Washington DC. I have commented on South Asian history and politics for BBC News (Worldservice, News 24), the Guardian, Prospect Magazine, More 4 News, The Economic Weekly and others and had commentary published in the LA Times and Forbes Magazine. I am a member of the Board of the European Association of South Asian Studies and co-convene the Royal Holloway South Asia Network.