The Faculty
Dr Sujit Sivasundaram
University Lecturer in World and Imperial History since 1500
Cambridge CB2 1TA
Biography:
I was born in Sri Lanka and came to Cambridge as a scientist, but soon discovered an interest in the history of the making of the modern world. Until recently I taught at the London School of Economics, in South Asian and Imperial History. I am a Fellow, Tutor and College Lecturer at Gonville and Caius College.
Subject groups/Research projects
Departments and Institutes
Teaching
For undergraduates I currently teach across the Part 1 papers in World History. I also convene a Specified Paper, 30, ''Islands and Beaches'': The Pacific and Indian Oceans in the Long Nineteenth Century.' I also lecture for the Specified Paper at Part II on the history of the Indian Subcontinent.
I also supervise MPhil and PhD students working in the broad field of world and imperial history. At present I have PhD students working on: the legal history of sexual intimacy in Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu; the persistence of land-based trade between Central Asia and India in the late early modern period; Catholic forms of belonging and diaspora from South Kanara, India; the frontier and the workings of the colonial state in North-West India; imperial transitions in St. Helena and the South Atlantic islands. I am particularly keen to hear from MPhil and PhD students wishing to undertake comparative projects which break down regional and national divides in world history.
Keywords
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Key Publications
- Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795-1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2005, paperback 2011).
- Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Colony (forthcoming, University of Chicago Press, 2013).
- Science, Race and Imperialism ed. with Marwa Elshakry in Victorian Sciecne and Literature, Vol 6, eds. Bernard Lightman and Gowan Dawson (forthcoming, Chatto and Pickering, 2012).
- Editor, Focus section for Isis on 'Global histories of science' with own contribution titled, 'Sciences and the Global: On Methods, Questions and Theory' Isis, Vol. 101, 2010. pp. 146-158. This forum includes essays by Marwa Elshakry, Shruti Kapila, Niel Safier and Helen Tilley.
- 'Ethnicity, Indegeneity and Migration in the Advent of British Rule to Sri Lanka' in American Historical Review, 2010, pp.428-452.
- 'Buddhist Kingship, British Archaeology and Historical Narratives in Sri Lanka, c.1750-1850', in Past and Present, No. 197, 2007, pp.111-142.
- 'Islanded: Natural History in the British Colonization of Ceylon' in David Livingstone and Charlie Withers eds. Geographies of Nineteenth-century Science (University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp.123-148.
- 'Race, Empire and Biology before Darwin' in Denis Alexander and Ron Numbers eds. Biology and Ideology (University of Chicago Press, 2010) pp.114-128.
- 'A global history of science and religion' in Thomas Dixon et. al eds. Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives (University of Cambridge Press, 2010), pp.177-198.
- ''A Christian Benares': Orientalism, science and the Serampore Mission of Bengal' in Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 44, 2007, pp.111-145.
- 'Trading Knowledge: The East India Company's Elephants in India and Britain' in The Historical Journal, Vol. 48, 2005, pp. 27-63.