Javed Majeed read English Language and Literature at Magdalen College Oxford (1981-84) where he also did his DPhil (1984-88). He was a research fellow at Churchill College Cambridge (1988-92) and the Smuts Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge (1989-92). He taught at SOAS and Queen Mary University of London, before moving to KCL in 2012 as Professor of English and Comparative Literature. His monographs are Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill’s the History of British India and Orientalism (1992), Autobiography, Travel and Postnational Identity: Gandhi, Nehru, and Iqbal (2007), Muhammad Iqbal: Islam, Aesthetics and Postcolonialism (2009), and his two-volume study Nation and Region in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India and Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India (2019). He is the author of 38 peer-reviewed essays on South Asian literature, politics, and intellectual history. His current research project is on Common law and the cultural politics of Englishness He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2021.

Research interests and PhD supervision

Research interests

• British colonialism in India
• Intellectual and literary history of modern South Asia
• Language politics in South Asia
• Politics and literature in South Asia
• Islam and colonialism in India

My current research project is on Common law and the Cultural Politics of Englishness.

Current PhD supervision

• Language and Belonging in 20th century Assam
• Indian Muslim travelogues in the 19th century
• Medico-literary texts in 19th century Tamil Nadu
• Biopics of political leaders in Indian cinema 1923-2023 (co-supervision with NUS)
• Cultures of Print and Reading in modern Kerala (co-supervision with JNU)

For more details, please see his full research profile.

Teaching

I teach in the areas of colonial and postcolonial literature, politics, translation studies, and history with a focus on India/South Asia.

Selected publications

• 'Beyond hegemonic binaries: English and the "vernaculars" in post-liberalization India', in Language Ideologies and the Vernaculars in South Asia, ed. N. Zaidi et al, (Routledge, 2024), pp. 17-32.
• ‘Multilingualism and management studies in South Asia’, in Managing the Post-Colony: Ways of Organising, Managing, and Living, ed. Nimruji Jammulamadaka et al, (Springer, 2022), pp. 39-58.
• ‘Literature of Empire: difference, creativity, and cosmopolitanism’, in Oxford World History of Empire, vol. 1, ed. Peter Fibiger Bang el al (OUP, 2021), pp. 342-81.
• Nation and Region in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India (Routledge, 2019).
• Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India (Routledge, 2019).