Dr Sundeep Lidher

Sundeep joined the Department of History at King’s in 2020. Born and raised in West London, Sundeep read Modern History at St Andrews and Modern South Asian History at Oxford. Her PhD research at Cambridge was situated at the intersection of British and World History and examined the evolution of British citizenship and immigration policy in the years between 1945 and 1962. This research interrogated policy developments in Britain within a broader imperial and global context, and as part of a longstanding framework of mobility controls on the entry and settlement of colonial-born subjects.

From 2018-2020, Sundeep worked as Research Associate (History) on the AHRC-funded interdisciplinary research project Beyond Banglatown, a collaboration between the universities of Cambridge, Manchester, and LSE. This study explored the history and contemporary landscape of the Bangladeshi-owned ‘Indian’ restaurant trade on Brick Lane in East London.

Between 2016 and 2018, Sundeep was based at The Runnymede Trust, the UK’s leading independent race equality think tank, where she co-led the multi-award-winning Our Migration Story project, a collaboration between the Trust and the universities of Cambridge and Manchester. The project is recipient of The Guardian University’s Research Excellence Award (2019), The Royal Historical Society’s Public History Prize (2018) and the Community Integration Research Champion Award (2017). 

Before embarking on her PhD studies, Sundeep spent time living and teaching in Germany.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Mobility control
• Subjecthood and citizenship
• Racism, law, and policy
• Black and Asian Britain
• Migration
• Britain and the World

Sundeep’s research is driven by an interest in the racialised inequalities of British subjecthood and citizenship; the global dispersal of the tools and technologies of mobility control; extra-national dimensions of British policymaking on citizenship and immigration; state racism and resistance to it; the movement of Black and Asian British subjects to Britain, and across the Empire and Commonwealth, in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the relationship between British, Imperial and World histories.

Currently co-supervising a PhD on the development of the Coloured Alien Seamen Order of 1925, Sundeep welcomes research students interested in working on any of the above areas.

Teaching

Undergraduate teaching:

• Migration, Citizenship, and the Nation in Twentieth Century Britain
• Black Lives in Modern London (in partnership with the Black Cultural Archives)
• Global Diasporas

Postgraduate teaching:

• Contemporary British History MA
• World History MA

Expertise and public engagement

Having co-led The Runnymede Trust’s history education work between 2016 and 2020, including the pioneering Our Migration Story partnership and the recent national #TeachRaceMigrationEmpire campaign, Sundeep continues to collaborate with the Trust and to advise policymakers, academics, teachers, schools, exam boards, textbook writers, and subject associations on curriculum reform issues. As part of this work, Sundeep has accepted invitations to speak at key academic and public events across the country and on various national media platforms.

In the 2020-21 academic year, Sundeep’s work to raise the visibility of British histories of race, empire and migration in the school curriculum continued in partnership with Prof. Claire Alexander (Manchester) as part of a £2.5 million ESRC-funded research project ‘Exploring Racial and Ethnic Inequality in a Time of Crisis’. Sundeep acted as Co-I on a workstream that examined the role of teacher training, and the experiences of teacher trainers and trainees, in implementing a more ‘diverse’ history curriculum.

Sundeep is advisor to the British Library’s new Voices of Partition education project, a member of the Historical Association’s Higher Education Committee, the Migration Museum Project’s Education Committee, an Affiliated Member of the Centre for the Dynamics of Ethnicity (University of Manchester), and co-convenor of the Institute of Historical Research’s ‘Britain at Home and Abroad since c. 1800’ seminar and ‘Black British History’ seminar.

Selected publications

Journal Articles:

• Lidher, S., Mcintosh, M., & Alexander, C. (2020), 'Our Migration Story: History, the National Curriculum, and Re-Narrating the British Nation', Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Policy Papers:

• Alexander, C., Carey, S., Lidher, S., Hall, S. and J. King (2020), 'Beyond Banglatown: Continuity, Change and New Urban Economies in Brick Lane', The Runnymede Trust.
• Lidher, S. (2019), 'Runnymede Briefing: Westminster Hall Debate ‘The Teaching of Migration in the History Curriculum', The Runnymede Trust.

Selected Blogs:

• Lidher, S. and Elias, H. (2020), 'Teaching British Histories of Race, Migration and Empire: a resource for teachers and learners', On History.
• Lidher, S. (2020) 'Beyond Banglatown: The Rich History of Brick Lane’s Curry Restaurants', Race Matters.
• Lidher, S. (2020) '7 Actions to Change the History Curriculum', Race Matters.
• Lidher, S. (2018) 'The Windrush Generation: British Citizenship and Mobility Control', Media Diversified.