One of the innovations of the CSMCH has been to introduce a new 3-month visiting postdoctoral fellowship in modern and contemporary history, in collaboration with the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (IASH). This fellowship is designed to bring someone to Edinburgh for a short research visit. The aim is to allow the fellow to pursue interdisciplinary research that ties in with the Centre’s chosen theme.
The first round of applications took place this summer and we’re very pleased to announce our first fellow, Dr Rakesh Ankit, who teaches history at the Law School in OP Jindal University, Sonipat. He is from Darbhanga, Bihar and studied at the universities of Delhi, Oxford and Southampton, from where he completed his PhD in 2014. His dissertation was published as Kashmir, 1945-66: From Empire to the Cold War (Routledge, 2016) and he has also worked on the Interim Government of September 1946-August 1947 in British India.
During the period of his fellowship, he will be working on a project entitled ‘Left in a Liberal Democracy: Communist Party(s) of India, 1920-1990’. This is the first part of a project that will eventually lead to a new history of Indian Communism, to be published by Hurst.
Rakesh will be with us from early November 2017 to late January 2018, He will be organising an event while he is here and he will also present some of his research to the Centre seminar on 28 November. We’re very pleased to have a promising young scholar in our ranks and I hope you will all join me in welcoming him to Edinburgh when he arrives!
— Emile