Ritika Prasad

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I am a historian of colonial South Asia, with particular interest in the social history of technology.

My monograph Tracks of Change: Railways and Everyday Life in Colonial India (Cambridge, 2015) explores how railway technology, travel, and infrastructure became increasingly woven into everyday life in colonial India, how people negotiated with the growing presence of railways, and how this process has shaped India's history

My current book project Imprimatur, Mediator, and Adversary: Press, Public and State in India, 1780-2023 examines the long-term triangular relationship between newspaper press, the colonial and postcolonial state, and a broader public as it has developed in India over two centuries. Instead of structuring state–press relations through the dichotomies of power versus freedom and/or surveillance versus sedition, it imagines it as one in which newspapers served simultaneously as imprimaturs, mediators, and adversaries in relation to the state.

Experience

  • –present
    Associate Professor of History, University of North Carolina – Charlotte

Education

  • 2009 
    University of California, Los Angeles, USA, PhD (History)
  • 2001 
    University of Oxford, United Kingdom, M.A. (Modern History)
  • 1997 
    University of Delhi, India, BA (History)

Publications

  • 2021
    “Railway bookselling and the politics of print in India: The case of A. H. Wheeler.”, Book History, 24: 1
  • 2020
    “Press freedom and colonial governance in India, 1780-1823,”, Modern Asian Studies
  • 2015
    Tracks of Change: Railways and Everyday Life in Colonial India, Cambridge University Press
  • 2014
    “Railways in Colonial South Asia", Mobility in History, 6:1
  • 2013
    “‘Time-Sense”: Railways and Temporality in Colonial India.”, Modern Asian Studies, 47: 4
  • 2012
    “Smoke and Mirrors: Women and Railway Travel in Colonial South Asia.” , South Asian History and Culture, 3:1

Professional Memberships

  • American Historical Association

Contact Ritika for

  • General
  • Media request
  • Speaking request
  • Consulting / Advising
  • Research collaboration
  • Research supervision