Dr Jon Wilson

• Modern history of South Asia
• Intellectual History of South Asia and beyond
• British Empire and Commonwealth
• Governance

 
Key words:
British Empire and Commonwealth| South Asia | India | Bangladesh | Modern |
Politics and the state| Imperial History | Intellectual history (Political Ideas) | Nationalism and National Identity |

Trained both in history and anthropology, Jon E. Wilson works primarily on the history of South Asia, in particular Bengal, and on the history of political and historical thought in a variety of global contexts. His first book, The Domination of Strangers. Modern governance in colonial India, 1780-1835 is published by Palgrave in 2008. It will be followed by a history of East Pakistan and Bangladesh since 1947 co-authored with Dr. Iftekhar Iqbal, and a book on the battle of Plassey - the moment said to have begun the British conquest of India - and its later interpretation in British and South Asia. Dr. Wilson coordinates an AHRC-funded international research network on the concept of tradition, and is a convenor of both the Comparative Asian History and Imperial History seminars at the Institute of Historical Research.

Dr Wilson particularly welcomes interest from prospective research students interested in working in the following fields:

• governance, law, politics or agrarian economic and social history in South Asia, c.1700-1900
• Bengal and Bangladesh during the twentieth century
• the British empire and global commerce, c.1680-1860
• South Asian migration to Britain
• empire and the history of political thought
• philosophies of modernity

Jon teaches on the undergraduate Worlds of the British Empire 1700-1960 module, as well as offering a third year special subject (Group III) on The Making of a Colonial Regime.

Jon Wilson joined the department in 1999 as Lecturer in British Imperial and South Asian History. He was awarded a DPhil from Oxford University in 2000, following two years in New York studying for an MA in Anthropology at the New School for Social Research. Dr Wilson is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the editorial board of Reviews in History and has been a Visiting Research Fellow at the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. He writes regularly on contemporary Bangladesh, reviews books for several journals and contributes to the Guardian and the Times Higher Education Supplement.