Shalini Sharma

I received my BA from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, then went on to do a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. I taught at the London School of Economics for 4 years where I was Teaching Fellow in International History 2003-2005. I was appointed as a Lecturer in Colonial and Postcolonial History at Keele University in 2005.

I am interested in the effects of empire on the politics of South Asia. My first monograph, Governance and Sedition: Radical Politics in Late-Colonial Punjab, 2010 identified Punjab in Northern India as an archetype of how India’s politics were managed with a high degree of success to further imperial interests. It explored how communist and socialist ideologies were adapted to a nationalistic and later democratic context.

I have since continued to explore the political and cultural consequences of imperialism in independent India by looking at the development of democratic structures and practice in India through an examination of political groups considered seditious and deviant by the postcolonial Indian state. I am now tracing the sources of anti-Americanism in the polity of independent India.