School of Advanced Study, University of London

Department Member, Institute of Historical Research

About

Background:

I read both English Literature and History at King’s College London and was awarded a doctorate in Imperial/South Asian History in March 2011.

Since September 2003 I have worked as a research administrator at the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research. During this period I have also taught History at London Metropolitan University and KCL, as well as undertaking research on behalf of the British Library and working as a copy-editor for several projects at the University of Stavanger.


Current research:

My research is concerned with the power relations within British officialdom in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Bengal, and their impact on the character of the East India Company’s colonial governance. It seeks to detail how the severe financial constraints imposed by the central government in Calcutta clashed with the prevailing amateurism and desire for rapid personal enrichment which characterised its European district officials.

In particular, my work demonstrates how the measures taken by local bureaucrats to resist the scrutiny of their superiors in Calcutta, and thereby protect their illicitly lucrative positions, inadvertently shaped the character of colonial governance in India. Ultimately, it presents the early Company state as a political entity characterised less by co-operation with Indian elites (as the likes of C. A. Bayly and A. Yang have argued) than by the forced disengagement from local society of its isolated and under-resourced district officials.

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