Research
My research focuses primarily on violence, particularly in colonial India, especially on the body and embodied forms of violence (including torture and sexual violence); gender and masculinity; pain and trauma; the state and sovereign power; law; biopolitics and governmentality; and necropolitics and bare life. My publications include Purifying Empire: Obscenity and the Politics of Moral Regulation in Britain, India and Australia (Cambridge, 2010), Communalism and Globalisation: South Asian Perspectives (co-edited with Chandana Mathur; Routledge, 2011) South Asian Governmentalities: Michel Foucault and Postcolonial Orderings (co-edited with Stephen Legg; Cambridge, 2018), Colonial Terror: Torture and State Violence in Colonial India (Oxford, 2021; 2025), and Policing and Violence in India: Origins, Nature, Resistance (co-edited with Jinee Lokaneeta, Speaking Tiger). I am currently working on two research projects: one, ENLIvEN (Empire, Nature and Liverpool: Investigating and Engaging with Natural History) is on the role of Liverpool as an imperial hub for the global trade in plants and animals in the 19th-20th centuries, and the impact this has on Liverpool, its people and its environment, and the other on sexual violence as a tool of colonial power in India.
Colonial Violence and the Body in Pain
My early research was comparative in scope; it aimed both to explore the cultural power of colonialism and the differing nature of colonialism in two different types of colonies (namely an 'exploitation' colony such as India and settler colonies such as Australia) and their imperial metropole (namely Britain). While my focus was primarily on cultural history - particularly attempts to regulate 'obscene' texts and images - I was also interested in how colonial states operated. Such interests drew me to the study of theories of power (particularly Foucault's concept of governmentality), modernity and globalization. More recently I have developed an interest in violence, particularly in the ways in which colonial regimes - especially in India - employed sovereign power, or the use of force, to enhance and maintain their authority, and the ways this intersected with other forms of power (including governmentality and - to draw from another Foucaultian concent - biopower). I am particularly interested, moreover, in the impact of such forms of violence on Indian bodies and minds, as exemplified in the book manuscript I recently completed on torture in colonial India. My current research is therefore extremely interdisciplinary and draws together a variety of theoretical and methodological strands, including scholarship on: pain and trauma; gender and masculinity; the body and embodied violence; interpersonal violence; violence and spectacle; the state and sovereign power; law; biopolitics and governmentality; and necropolitics and bare life.
Policing and Violence in colonial and post-colonial India
I am currently co-editing a book, with Dr. Santana Khanikar (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and Prof. Jinee Lokaneeta (Drew University) on policing and violence in India, to be published by Speaking Tiger press.
Research Supervision
I welcome inquiries from prospective students who wish to pursue an MRes or PhD in modern Indian (from the 18th century onwards), British, or British imperial and colonial history, in addition to projects in these or other geographical contexts and time periods relating to the history of violence and/or gender, sexuality, and the body.
Research groups
- Imperialism and Colonialism
Research grants
Rape, Policing, and the 'Law-Preserving' Violence of Colonial Rule in India
BRITISH ACADEMY (UK)
January 2023 - January 2024
Colonial Terror: Torture, Violence and the Unmaking of the World
INDEPENDENT SOCIAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION (UK)
February 2017 - January 2018
The 'Civilising' Violence of Colonialism: Indian Experiences and Legacies
INDEPENDENT SOCIAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION (UK)
August 2017