Personal Information

Nationality: Indian
Date of Birth: 30 January 1980

Current Position

2015-: Senior Research Fellow, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin.

Principal Investigator on the European Research Council (ERC)-funded project ‘Domestic Servants in colonial South Asia’.

Past Employment

2017-18: Visiting Lectureship in Modern History, Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Goettingen, Germany.

2012-15: Lecturer in Modern History, Department of History, University of York, UK.

2008-2012: Research Fellow, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. Project titled ‘The Ganga: Landscape, Community, Religion, 1760s–1960s’.

2011-12: Visiting Lectureship in Modern South Asia, South Asia Institute (SAI), University of Heidelberg, Germany.

2010-11: Visiting Lectureship in Modern South Asia, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin.

2005-07: Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London.

Education

2003-07: Ph.D, South Asian History, Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London.

2002-03: M. Phil, Modern Indian History, Centre for Historical Studies (CHS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. (Supervisors: Tanika Sarkar, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Indivar Kamketar).

2000-02: M.A., Modern Indian History, CHS, JNU (first grade).

1997-2000: B.A., History (Hons), Patna College, Patna University, India (first grade).

Teaching

Both at the undergraduate and masters/postgraduate levels, I have offered courses on the history of transport, traffic and cities, comparative technologies, agrarian and environmental pasts, the British empire and colonial transition in South Asia in the history departments of Humboldt University, University of Heidelberg, University of Goettingen and University of York.

Course titles (self-designed)

• What Colonialism did to Land? University of Goettingen, Germany, 2017/18, (mixed B.A. and M.A.)
• From Merchants to Rulers (Period Course, first year)
• Cities as Traffic Machines (Special Subject Course, third year)
• Technology (Comparison Module, second year) Department of History, University of York, UK, 2012/13, (all B.A. level)
• Colonial Transition and British Empire in India, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany, 2011/12, (M.A. level)
• Colonial Transition in India, 1760s–1850s, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Germany, 2010/11, (M.A. level)

Shared teaching

• Lectures on the themes of nationalism, nation-state and imperialism within the core module titled Citizens, Comrades and Consumers: The Making of the Modern World since 1650-, Department of History, University of York, UK, (B.A. level) (changed the lecture notes to include focus on imperialism and Global South).
• Thinking Through History: Themes in Advanced Historical Studies, Department of History, University of York, UK, (B.A. level) (replaced some of the prescribed literature with South Asian and imperial conceptual readings, for instance, on centre, periphery, time, travel and famine).

Convener, M.A. programme, Institute of Railway Studies, York National Railway Museum, UK.

• Responsible for admissions.
• Co-supervised M.A./M.Phil theses.

Fellowships

2015-: Associate Fellow, IGK, ‘Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History’, re:work, Humboldt University, Berlin.

2013-14: 10-month fellowship at IGK, ‘Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History’, re:work, Humboldt University, Berlin.

2003–07: Felix Foundation Scholarship for Ph.D.

2004: SOAS Ph.D Bursary.

2003: SARAI Studentship, Centre for Studies of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi.

Grants & Awards

2015-18: European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC-StG) for the project Domestic Servants in Colonial South Asia (Principal Investigator).

2004: Best paper award in the section ‘Modern India and the Countries other than India’, Indian History Congress, India.

2002-03: Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) Fieldwork Research Grant Fellowship.

Publications

Article under review

• ‘Who Is (Not) a Servant, Anyway? Domestic Servants and Service in Early Colonial India’, Modern Asian Studies (revised version submitted in July 2018).

Forthcoming books under contract

• Nitin Sinha, Nitin Varma & Pankaj Jha, eds., Servants’ Pasts, 16th – 18th Centuries, Vol. 1, Orient Blackswan, New Delhi (also open access, estimated publication September 2019).
• Nitin Sinha & Nitin Varma, eds., Servants’ Pasts, 18th – 20th Centuries, Vol. 2, Orient Blackswan, New Delhi (also open access, estimated publication December 2019).
• Nitin Sinha & Prabhat Kumar, eds., Domestic Servants: An Anthology, Pan Macmillan, Delhi (estimated publication July 2019).

Published monograph

• Communication and Colonialism in Eastern India, Bihar: 1760s–1880s, Anthem Press, London and New York, 2012, [ppb 2014; Indian edition 2014].

Research articles (refereed)

• ‘The Idea of Home in a World of Circulation: Steam, Women & Migration through Folksongs’, International Review of Social History, 63, 2, 2018, 203-238. Open access.
• ‘Infrastructural Governance and Social History: Roads in Colonial and Postcolonial India’, History Compass, 15, 9, 2017, pp. 1-10.
• ‘Engines vs. Elephants: Train Tales of India Modernity’, Ineterdisziplinare Zeitschrift fur Sudasienforschung 1, 2016, pp. 112-130. Open access.
• ‘Railway Imperialism: A Small Town Perspective on Global History, Jamalpur, 1860s–1900s’, Comparativ: A Journal of Global History and Comparative Studies, 25/4, 2015, pp. 17-34.
• ‘Contract, Work and Resistance: Boatmen in Early Colonial Eastern India, 1760s–1850s’, International Review of Social History, 59, S22, 2014, pp. 11-43.
• ‘Fluvial Landscape and the State: Property and the Gangetic Diaras in Colonial India, 1790s–1890s’, Environment and History, 20, 2, 2014, pp. 209-37.
• ‘Entering the Black Hole: Between ‘Mini-England’ and ‘Smell-Like Rotten Potato’, the Railway-Workshop Town of Jamalpur, 1860s–1940s’, South Asian History and Culture, 3, 3, 2012, pp. 317-47.
• ‘World of Workers’ Politics: Some Issues of Railway Workers in Colonial India, 1918–1922’, Modern Asian Studies, 42, 5, 2008, pp. 999-1033.
• ‘Mobility, Control and Criminality in Colonial India, 1760s–1850s’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 45, 1, 2008, pp. 1-33.

Research articles (non-refereed)

• ‘The Making of India’s Modernity’, International School of Social History Newsletter, no. 73, Spring 2016, pp. 24-5.
• ‘‘Opinion’ and ‘Violence’: Whiteness, Empire and State-formation in Colonial India’, South Asia Chronicle, 4/2014, pp. 322-51.
• ‘Continuity and Change: The Eighteenth Century and Indian Historiography’, South Asia Chronicle, 2/2012, pp. 416-440.
• With Katharina Lange and Sebastian Prange, ‘Reflecting on ‘Muslim Worlds – World of Islam’ from a Spatial Perspective’ ZMO Programmatic Texts, No. 7, 2013.
• ‘Anxiety, Fear and Change: 1857 and Colonial Rule in Bihar’, Prajna Bharati: The Journal of the K. P. Jayaswal Research Institute, Patna, 14, 2008, pp. 33-50.
• ‘Forms of Workers’ Protest amidst Dilemmas of Contesting Mobilizations: The Jamalpur strike of 1919 and 1928’, Sephis E Magazine: Special Issue on Labour in Memory of Late Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, 3, 2, 2007.
• ‘Contest and Communication: The Geography of Rebellion in Bihar’, Biblio: A Review of Books: A Special Issue on 1857, xii, March–April, 2007.

Book chapters
Forthcoming

• ‘‘Servant problem’ and ‘Social-Subaltern’ of Early Colonial Calcutta’, in Nitin Sinha, Nitin Varma & Pankaj Jha, eds., Servants’ Pasts, 16th – 18th Centuries, vol. 1, Orient Blackswan, New Delhi.

Published

• ‘The Home and the World in Indian Folksongs of Marriage and Migration’, in James Williams and Felicitas Hentschke, eds., To Be at Home: House, Work, and Self in Modern World, De Gruyter, 2018, pp. 154-60.
• ‘Measuring Disaster?: ‘Everydayness’ of Fluvial Landscape and Colonial State in Gangetic Diaras, 1790s–1880s’, in Gerrit Schenk, ed., A Comparative and Transcultural Survey of Historical Disaster Experiences between Asia and Europe, Springer Press, 2017, pp. 369-78.
• ‘Law, Agro-ecology and Colonialism in mid-Gangetic India, 1770s–1910s’, in Gunnel Cederlöf and Sanjukta Das Gupta, eds., Subjects, Citizens, and Law: Colonial and Independent India, Routledge, India, 2016, pp. 163-190.  
• ‘Protest and Mobilization: Aspects of Workers’ Resistance and Control’, in Marcel van der Linden and Prabhu Mohapatra, eds., Labour Matters: Towards Global Histories: Studies in Honour of Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Tulika, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 280-94.
• ‘Forged Linkages and the ‘Spectre’ of 1857: A Few Instances from Bihar’, in Sharmistha Gooptu and Boria Majumdar, eds., Revisiting 1857: History, Myth, Memory, Roli Books, Delhi, 2007, pp. 52-69.

Selected book reviews

• Jon Wilson, ‘India Conquered: Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of Empire’, Reviews in History.
• Clive Dewey, ‘Steamboats on the Indus: The Limits of Western Technological Superiority in South Asia’, The English Historical Journal, December 2017.
• Valeska Huber, ‘Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond, 1869-1914’, The International Journal of Maritime History, 26, 4, 2014.
• Lata Singh, ‘Popular Translations of Nationalism: Bihar, 1920-22’.
• Iftekhar Iqbal, ‘The Bengal Delta: Ecology, State and Social Change, 1840-1943’, South Asia Chronicle, 1/2011.

Professional Expert Services

• Series Editor, New Perspectives on South Asian History, Orient Blackswan, Delhi.
• Member, Editorial Board, Journal of Transport History.
• Book manuscript review for: Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge.
• Article submission review for peer-reviewed journals: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Environment and History, Modern Asian Studies, Indian Economic and Social History Review, South Asian History and Culture, Journal of Women’s History, Transfers, Global Media and Communication and The Historical Journal.
• Project evaluation: for Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK.
• Ph.D external examination, University of Delhi, India.
• Co-founder of Young South Asia Scholars Meet (Y-SASM).
  

Memberships

Co-editor, academic monograph series titled New Perspectives in South Asian History, Orient Blackswan, India.

Co-founder of Y-SASM (Young South Asia Scholars Meet), Berlin, 2010.

Invited Lectures (selected)

2017: ‘Who is (not) a Servant, Anyway?: Domestic Servants and Service in Early Colonial India’, Presidency University, Kolkata, 26 July.

2016: ‘Who are Servants? Early Colonial State and Regimes of Regulation’, Centre for the History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, 21 December.

2016: ‘Domestic Servants in Colonial India, 1700s–1900s’, Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen, 14 June.

2016: ‘Roads in Past and Present of India’, Nalanda University, 01 April.

2015: ‘Railway Imperialism: A ‘Global’ History of Jamalpur, 1860s–1910s’, Presidency University, Kolkata, 11 February.

2014: ‘Contract, Work and Resistance: Boatmen in Early Colonial Eastern India, 1760s–1850s’, ZMO, Berlin, 28 March.

2012: ‘Between Lease and Permanent Settlement: Gangetic Diaras and the Colonial State, 1790s–1880s’, CHS, JNU, New Delhi, 21 March.

Panel and Conference Organization (selected)

April 2018: ‘Servants’ Pasts, 16th–20th Centuries’, 2nd International Conference on Domestic Servants in India, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.

April 2018: ‘Domestic Service and Regulation in Colonial Societies’, European Social Science History Congress, Belfast, UK.

February 2017: ‘Servants’ Pasts, 16th–20th Centuries’, Centre for the Studies of Developing Societies, New Delhi.

July 2016: ‘Servants’ Past: Interrogating Forms of Domestic Service, 1600–1850’, panel at the 24th European Conference on South Asian Studies, Warsaw, Poland.

July 2014: ‘Reinterpreting South Asian State-Formation: Communication-Spatialities and State Structures’, panel at the 23rd European Conference on South Asian Studies, Zurich, Switzerland.

April 2013: ‘Work, Labour and Skill – Historical Meanings and Changes’, panel at the 27th British Association of South Asian Studies, Leeds, UK.

October 2012: International conference on ‘Roads as Routes to Modernity’, ZMO, Berlin, Germany.

Invited Paper Presentations & Engagement as Discussant (selected)

Discussant, ‘Infrastructure: Labour and Nature in South Asia’, European Conference of South Asian Studies (ECSAS), Paris, July 2018.

Paper presentation, ‘A Day in Servant’s Life’, in Time and Money: Themes in Labour Relations, Centre for Modern Indian Studies, Goettingen University, Goettingen, December 2017.

Discussant, ‘History, Memory and the Archives of Experience: Oral Histories of Labour in South Asia’, Berlin, May 2017.

Discussant, ‘Free and Unfree Labour’ in, Six Years of Re:Work Conference, Berlin, June 2015.

Paper presentation, ‘Colonial Walks: Between ‘Zone of Contact’ and ‘Zone of Comfort’’, in Modern Walks: Human Locomotion during the Long Nineteenth Century, 1800–1914, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, September 2013.

Contributions to Public Media

Several opinion pieces in The Wire:

• In English, single authored
• In Hindi, single authored
• In English, with Vidhya Raveendranathan
  

Languages

English (professional); Hindi (mother tongue); Bengali (intermediate); Bhojpuri (fluent); Urdu (basic).