We are very proud to announce that Professor Rosalind (Polly) O'Hanlon has been elected a British Academy fellow.
Professor O'Hanlon, Professor of Indian History at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, has played a pivotal role in the inception and running of the new MSc and MPhil programmes in Modern South Asian Studies, serving as Course Director for the first two years of the new degrees.
Polly's work focusses on the early modern and colonial history of India. She also works on histories of empire, with particular reference to caste and gender; problems in intellectual history and historical methodology in the postcolonial world; and the history, language and culture of the important Indian state of Maharashtra. She aims in particular to contribute to our understanding of the colonial world by exploring much longer term processes of societal formation. These enable us better to understand the ruptures and discontinuities of colonialism, as well as the social institutions which survived it, often in transfigured and remade forms.
She says "In these most difficult days for scholars and researchers everywhere, it is wonderful to be able to celebrate this honour. Having myself benefitted from the comprehensive support that the Academy offers to scholars at every stage of their careers, I am immensely grateful now for this opportunity to contribute to its work. The Academy already offers brilliant support for interdisciplinary projects. But for scholars of the post-colonial world in particular, the Academy's developing programme of visiting fellowships and scholar exchanges gives us tremendous opportunities to build solid research links with colleagues in the countries that we study, colleagues who are in many cases also facing grave political as well as epidemiological challenges."
CSASP has missed Polly while she has been enjoying a well-earned sabbatical in 2019-20 and we look forward to welcoming her back to Oxford from Michaelmas Term.
Full details of the 86 newly-appointed fellows (including 10 from Oxford) can be found here: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/2020s-will-be-the-decade-of-humanities-and-social-sciences-says-new-british-academy-president-julia-black/