Menu Close
Professor of History, Royal Holloway University of London

My main research interests focus on the recent history of South Asia, in particular those parts of the subcontinent that became Pakistan in 1947. Between 2007-2010 I was co-investigator on an AHRC-funded collaborative research project entitled "From Subjects to Citizens: Society and the Everyday State in India and Pakistan, 1947-1964". This involved me exploring in detail the kinds of interaction that took place between ordinary people and the state in the context of the Pakistani province of Sindh and the city of Karachi during the decades following independence and partition.

Apart from a number of individual publications and the popular history of Pakistan that I am currently writing (to be published by Cambridge University Press), I have co-authored an article with my project colleagues William Gould (Leeds) and Taylor Sherman (formerly at Royal Holloway, now at LSE) entitled 'The flux of the matter: loyalty, corruption and the everyday state in post-partition India and Pakistan' (Past and Present, 2013), that highlights some of the project's joint findings as well as areas for further research. I am also editor of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, which publishes four issues a year.

Experience

  • –present
    Professor of History, Head of Department, Royal Holloway