Niladri Chatterjee

Visiting Researcher in the Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Department of Cultural Sciences, Linnaeus University, Sweden.

Niladri Chatterjee studied at Uppsala University, Sweden, and Calcutta University, India, before receiving his PhD in Modern South Asian History from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London, United Kingdom. He is currently on a research leave from the Department of History and Philosophy, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, North South University, Bangladesh, where he has been working since 2015 as an Assistant Professor in History. He has previously worked as Guest Lecturer in the Department of History at Rabindra Bharati University (2012-2013) and as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata, India.

Dr. Chatterjee teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses related to South Asian History, Global History, and Introduction to World Civilizations.

Publications:

1. "Nation, Nationalism and the Ambivalent Middle Class Intelligentsia in Colonial Bengal during the Uprising of 1857-58" – Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, October 2016.
2. "The European Response towards the Indian Rebellion Of 1857" – Long Book Review, Rivista degli Studi Orientali (ISSN: 0392-4866), Sapienza Università di Roma, December 2014.
3. "Revisiting the Chipko Movement: The Emergence of Environmental Activism in South Asia" – Exploring History (ISSN: 2230-8490), Calcutta, September 2012.
4. "Mahabidrohe Bangla" (The Revolt in Bengal-Revisited) - in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), Drohokaal, New Delhi: Digangan Press, 2009. (ISBN: 978-81-905926-8-0)
5. Long Book Review: "Rethinking 1857", The Calcutta Historical Journal, Volume: XXVIII, Number 2, July-December, 2008. (ISSN: 0254-9794)

Forskning

Dr. Chatterjee's forthcoming research monograph, based on his PhD dissertation, deals with the socio-political and intellectual history of the Uprising of 1857 in the Indian subcontinent, as it unfolded in the lower province of Bengal. The book argues that in spite of the regional specificities that determined the nature, character and outcome of the movement, the uprising was a multifaceted and multilayered one, and the events of varying multitudes in the region were interconnected, together which brought about a crisis of the colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent. It evaluates the role and significance of non-traditional modes of communication, with specific focus on the circulation of rumours in and around the region and the response of the colonial government. The other intervention that the monograph makes is to revisit the question of 'loyalism' amongst the middle class intelligentsia of Bengal during this moment of crises. In Bengal, 'loyalism' of the intelligentsia contained internal dilemmas and contradictions, thus opening a space for moving beyond such simplistic terminologies.

At present I am working on my next research project about the transnational history of global health policies and the ideas of development in the postcolonial nation states. By examining the development of the Cholera Research in Bangladesh between 1960 and 2015 in a historical perspective, I seek to analyse strategies of policies and actors (researchers and policymakers) of international organizations in shaping the directives of global public health in a local context. The project explores the relationship between the local and the global in shaping cholera research through the narratives of the professionals who worked for the Cholera Research Laboratory in Bangladesh during this period. One of the central aims of the project is to underline the agency of both researchers and local needs in the implementation of global health policies. A glocalization in health research may in this case indicate transformations and reciprocal relationships that can be used for analyzing discursive power as well as the development of political economies.