Modern Britain and empire; colonial India; women, gender and feminism; postcolonial studies; world history

I’m a historian of 19th and 20th century Britain and its empire, with a specialty in colonial India and an ongoing interest in Australasia and Africa. I’ve written on topics ranging from feminism and colonialism to the relationship of empire to the nation and the world. Women, gender and sexuality have always been central to my research, much of which has been concerned with the role of Indian women in the imperial and postcolonial imagination. I’ve edited collections about politics, mobility, postcolonialism and empire and have frequently collaborated with Tony Ballantyne.

At Illinois I have taught courses on modern British history and imperialism, gender and colonialism, autobiography and the archive, approaches and methods and world history. I am currently working on a Bloomsbury series on the cultures of western imperialism and a Duke University Press series on history teaching.

I am currently the director of the campus humanities center, The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. For more information click here. I am also the Principal Investigator for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, Humanities Without Walls.

B.A. Yale University, 1983
M.A. University of Chicago, 1984
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1990

Swanlund Endowed Professor, University of Illinois, 2018-
Center for Advanced Study Professor, 2018-
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Humanities Without Walls, 2015-2020
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, 2010-11
Sustainability Studies Initiative in the Humanities Fellowship, UIUC, 2011-12
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2015 (declined)
Catherine C. and Bruce A. Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies, University of Illinois, 2004-18
University Scholar, University of Illinois, 2001-2004
William Evans Residential Fellowship, University of Otago (Dunedin, NZ), 2004
American Philosophical Society Research Fellowship, 1995
NEH summer seminar, “The Culture of London, 1850-1925,” Institute of Historical Research, London, 1995
American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship, 1993
Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom, 1987-88

Provost Initiative for Teaching Advancement, for "World Histories from Below" graduate student/teacher training project, 2011-12
Sustainability Studies Initiative in the Humanities for course development, "Wars against Nature in the British Empire, 1750-1950," 2011-12
NEH Humanities Focus Grant, "The Undergraduate History Core in a Global Age," co-written with Tony Ballantyne and Peter Fritzsche, 2001

(217) 333-6874

World Histories from Below

An ABC of Queen Victoria's Empire

How Empire Shaped Us

Ten Books that Shaped the British Empire: Creating an Imperial Commons

The Trouble with Empire: Challenges to Modern British Imperialism

An Illinois Sampler: Teaching and Research on the Prairie

Brown Over Black: Race and the Politics of Postcolonial Citation

Empire in Question: Reading, Writing and Teaching British Imperialism

Empires and the Reach of the Global

Primer for Teaching World History: Ten Design Principles

The First Anglo-Afghan Wars: A Reader

The Postcolonial Careers of Santha Rama Rau

Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home and History in Late Colonial India

At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late Victorian Britain

Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire

Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915

Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History

Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions and the Writing of History

After the Imperial Turn: Thinking with and through the Nation

Politics and Empire in Victorian Britain: A Reader

Postcolonial Studies and Beyond