Dr Philip Jagessar

Dr Philip Jagessar is a research fellow at the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine. His research, funded by a Wellcome Trust Early Career Award, examines colonial efforts to map disease and public health in early 20th century India.

Prior to joining King’s in 2022, Philip completed a PhD in geography at the University of Nottingham. His previous research focused on the colonial Linguistic Survey of India’s mapping of languages and its contested legacy in South Asian linguistic geography and politics.

Other research interests include the histories of institutional map collections/archives, for which Philip was awarded a Harley Fellowship to study the Royal Asiatic Society’s unique map collection, as well as undertaking a previous project to investigate the School of Geography’s map collection at Nottingham.

Outside of King’s, Philip co-convenes the Maps and Society lecture series at the Warburg Institute (University of London) and is a committee member of the RGS-IBG’s Historical Geography Research Group.

Research

• Colonial maps and surveys
• Histories of thematic cartography
• Science and medicine in early 20th century India
• Internationalism in science, medicine and cartography
• Archives and map collections

The Wellcome-funded research focuses on the Public Health Commissioner (PHC) to the Government of India’s mapping in the early 20th century. There are two strands to the research:

1. examines the practicalities and politics of surveying and mapping public health in India and the making of India-wide maps.
2. considers the influence of the PHC’s mapping on the development of international systems of health surveillance in the interwar period, through the PHC’s working relationship with the League of Nations Health Organisation.

Further details

See Philip's research profile