History Department
Sohini Chattopadhyay
Job Title
Assistant Professor of History
Areas of expertise
South Asia, History of Science and Technology
Research interests
I am a historian of South Asia. My research spans from colonialism to its aftermath, with particular interests in the comparative studies of urban history, labor histories, and the history of science and technology.
My current book project studies the intersections between Science and Technology Studies and South Asian history through the history of the crematorium, as the object transformed working class death rites and community histories in Bombay and Calcutta (present day Mumbai and Kolkata). I argue for the need to study the disjunctive and regionally varied colonial histories of science and technology in British India, and I demonstrate that the regional variations were necessary (and often strategic) outcomes of colonial science's engagement with labor, caste, and community hierarchies.
Drawing from my interest in bodies and technologies, my second book project focuses on the business and social histories of sanitary napkins in colonial to Cold War era South Asia.
Teaching interests
My teaching has followed my interest in uncovering the silent and sidelined voices of history. I love to pay attention to marginalized details: what small snippets of archival materials, traces of objects, or what the lives of certain technologies can tell us. I encourage my students to think of history as a form of storytelling that allows one to think of causes in deep time. More specifically, my courses are at the intersections of imperialism, South Asia and STS. They include:
HST 184: India and Pakistan
HST 280: Epidemics and Empire
HST 286: Technology and Empire
HST 305: Bombay to Jakarta: Indian Ocean Port City Histories
HST 386: India: Caste, Class, Cinema
FYI 100: Dismantling Caste
STS 101: Introduction to Science and Technology Studies (module II: Science and Colonialism), co-taught with Andrew Burkett, Angela Commito and Nick Webb.
Publications
My forthcoming publications include an article on death, dissection and labor history forthcoming in Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, and a chapter focused on death and display on the forthcoming Cambridge History of Medicine, Volume 5, edited by Projit B. Mukharji and Rana Hogarth. I am also one among a team of faculty from Union College who have designed courses across liberal arts and engineering, and we have described our teaching philosophy and methods in a paper presentation titled, Complementary and Contrasting Perspectives: Collaborative Teaching across Engineering, Computer Science, and the Liberal Arts, for the 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Montreal.
Digital Humanities and Public History: I am on the board of faculty advisors for a journal called Borderlines which I co-founded in 2017. Borderlines seeks to rethink social science theories and pedagogies through research situated in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. It emphasizes open-source collaborative work, including interviews and conversations among authors, and multimedia driven essays and stories. You can check it out here.
I have also been invited to contribute archival representations towards the Hidden Epidemics Exhibition, to be held at the The Heong Gallery, University of Cambridge, curated by Freya Jephcott, Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. I also continue to write for various media outlets in India. Some of my recent engagements are available on scroll.in, The Telegraph, The Print, Quartz, SSRC Items.
Additional media
Areas of interest
South Asia, Science and Technology Studies, British Empire, Urban History, Gender, Caste, Community histories, Digital Humanities, Public History.Academic credentials
BA, Presidency College, Calcutta University; MA, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; PhD, Columbia University
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