Thomas J. McNally
Previously, Thomas graduated with a BA in History and Politics at The Open University (2019); an MA in Early Modern History at King's College London (2020) where he was supervised by Prof. Jon Wilson. He is a first year doctoral candidate in History supervised by Prof. Samita Sen. Outside of his thesis Thomas has a broad interest in early modern India and central Asia in addition to cultural interactions between west and east.
'Ideational development of British imperial thought and polity-formation in Bengal, 1773-1835'
Thomas' research concerns the Bengali polity between 1773-1835 and how its reconfiguration mirrored British elites' differing opinions on how an empire should be organised and maintained. Building on his MA thesis which examined the paradoxes of the Bengali polity governed by indigenous elites (1727-1757) the PhD thesis is a joint British-Indian story of how Britain assimilated or incorporated new ideas ranging from Islamic jurisprudence to Mughal tax policy into its growing empire.
At a wider level he is interested in Bengal's interactions with the rest of the world; empire-building in central/south Asia; cultural interactions and the English East India Company.