I am a historian of British Imperialism and Modern South Asia, with wide-ranging research and teaching interests in histories of South Asia, colonial science and medicine, and (more recently) colonial Christianity. I am the author of Vernacular Medicine in Colonial India: Family, Market and Homoeopathy (Cambridge University Press, 2019); co-editor of Chosen Peoples: Bible, Race and Empire in the Nineteenth Century (Manchester University Press, 2020) and part of the  Editorial Board for History (Journal of Historical Association). For Vernacular Medicine in Colonial India I recieved the 2020 John Pickstone Prize, awarded once every two years by the British Society for the History of Science for 'the best English-language scholarly book in the history of science, technology and medicine.' https://www.bshs.org.uk/2020-pickstone-prize-winner-announced 

Since completing my PhD from University College London, I have held an ERC-funded collaborative Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge (2012-2017); and a Wellcome Trust-funded Medical Humanities Fellowship at the University of Oxford (2017-2019).

Vernacular Medicine in Colonial India (CUP, 2019)  explores how the colonized peoples negotiated with and reshaped western medicine. It examines the interactions between British state, Indian nationalist print cultures and indigenous commercial interests relating to public health governance in India. The official health policy of the state promoted state medicine or biomedicine. The book tracks how, despite the state’s opposition, a medical practice that was marginal in Europe could become a mainstream aspect of public health in the colony. Combining insights from the history of colonial medicine and the cultural histories of family in British India, the book examines the processes through which Western homoeopathy was translated and indigenised in the colony as a symbol of Indian nationalism, a specific Hindu religious worldview, an economic vision and a disciplining regimen of everyday life.

Chosen Peoples: Bible, Race and Empire in the Nineteenth Century (MUP, 2020) explores how biblical themes and metaphors shaped narratives of racial, national and imperial identity in the long nineteenth century. It responds to the recent ‘global turn’ in the historiography in its exploration of these narratives as they developed across a very wide range of different contexts: from North America to Central Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Ireland and Australasia. 

My current research, provisionally titled Healing Heathen Lands: Christianity, Medicine, Empire critically analyses the role of British Protestant missions and transnational humanitarianism in the making of colonial public health in India. I examine how the theologically shaped ideas of missionaries on disease and healing interacted with colonial public health policies. While tracing the relationship of British medical missions with the colonial (and the post-colonial) state, I track the response of Indians to Christianity and Christian missions. I am particularly focusing on missionary engagement with control of leprosy, famines and venereal diseases.

I have collaboratively organised conferences on themes such as ‘The Bible, Race and Nation in the 19th c’ (Cambridge, 2014) and ‘Orientalism and Its Institutions’ (Cambridge, 2016).

Key Research Interest and Expertise:

• British Empire
• Modern South Asia/India
• Imperial and Global Medicine and Science
• Christianity and British Empire

Teaching at UEA:

Level 4:

• Human Rights, Dignity and Global Justice
• Introduction to Modern History

Level 5:

• British India: Empire, Nation and the People in South Asia
• Global Health Histories: Colonial Medicine to Global Health and Beyond

MA:

• Nationalism and Violence in the Twentieth Century

Select External Activity:

• Part of the Editorial Board of History (Journal of Historical Association)
• Act as peer-reviewer for reputed journals including The Historical Journal (CUP); Medical History(CUP); Social History of Medicine (OUP), Modern Asian Studies (CUP), História, Ciências, Saúde—Manguinhos (Oswaldo Cruz Foundation), Presidency Historical Journal (Kolkata, India)
• Act as External Grant Reviewer for the Wellcome Trust, UK
• Served as the Book Review Editor (South Asia) for the journal Asian Medicine (from 2019-2021)
• Editorial Board Member for the book series 'Science 
  in Culture' (Pittsburgh University Press, editor: Bernard Lightman); 'Global Epistemics' (Rowland and Littlefield International, editor: Inanna Hamati-Ataya)
• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (elected 2020); Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (elected 2021)