Gunnel Cederlöf newly elected member of Kungliga Vitterhetsakademien (The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters).

Cederlöf is Professor of History at the Department of Cultural Sciences and the Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. Her research combines environmental history, legal history, and colonial and British imperial history. It connects global and local history, and has a particular focus on early modern and modern India.

Her present research concerns how political power, subjecthood, and polity was formed when the British Empire grew in Asia. It covers issues of commerce, law, land and property, and the impact of monsoons and disasters.

Gunnel Cederlöf heads two research projects "The India-China Corridor" that studies the formation of polities in the region that connects India and China, conceptualised as the India-China Corridor, during the formation of the British Empire in Asia (the project is funded by the Swedish Research Council during 2016-19) and "Huseby i världen" a project that ties together the history of Småland County, southern Scandinavia, India, and the British Empire (the project is funded by the Kamprad Family Foundation during 2017-19).