Professor Nandini Chatterjee

I am a historian of South Asia with expertise in the Mughal and colonial periods. My work is on law and cultural exchanges in South Asian empires from 1600-1900 CE. I trained as a historian of South Asia at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India and at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, before undertaking my PhD at the University of Cambridge. I write on law and colonialism in South Asia and also on Mughal socio-legal history, using Persian-language documentary material. My most recent monograph (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/negotiating-mughal-law/3C8631AFC67A29A671AD5C3206B035CC) was a path-breaking study of Mughal law, told through the history of a family of landlords, and using a completely reconstructed archive of Persian-language documents.

I have a keen interest in the capacities of computation for analysing texts and textual corpora in new and creative ways, for creating archives of marginalised materials valuable for socio-cultural studies and for making such materials accessible to researchers and citizens alike. Since 2020, I have been working actively on matters of public memory, memorialisation cultures and community-led heritage work in the UK and elsewhere.

Some of my public-facing work may be seen here  and here.  I am one of the editors of the English Historical Review and a prize committee member of the American Society for Legal History.

In my free time, I like watching Bollywood films, learning new languages, and growing vegetables.