Faculty at School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Divya Kannan

Divya Kannan

Associate Professor

School of Humanities and Social Sciences


Contact Information

19th and 20th South Asian history, History of Education, Childhood and Youth, Caste, Gender Studies, Social Movements, Empires and Colonial Violence, Christian missions, and Public and Oral Histories

2017, Ph.D., Modern Indian History, Jawaharlal Nehru University

2012, M.Phil., Modern Indian History, Jawaharlal Nehru University

2008, M.A., Modern Indian History, Jawaharlal Nehru University

2005, B.A. (Hons) History, Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi

2017-2018

Assistant Professor, Department of History, Miranda House College, University of Delhi

Grace Abbott Book Prize for the Best Book in English 2025, awarded by the Society for the History of Children and Youth, for my book "Contested Childhoods: Caste and Education in Colonial Kerala".

The Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship, University of Edinburgh, May- July 2026.

2013-2016, Transnational Doctoral Research Fellowship, Research Group: Poverty Reduction and Policy for the Poor between the State and Private Actors: Education Policy in India since the Nineteenth Century, (A collaborative project between the German Historical Institute London, Centre for Modern Indian Studies {University of Goettingen}, Centre for Historical Studies and Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Studies {JNU New Delhi} and CSDS, New Delhi

2016, Research Fellowship, Georg-Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, Brauschweig, Germany

  1. Co-edited with R.Maithreyi, Editorial- Special issue: Modernity, Schooling, and Childhood in India: Trajectories of exclusion, Children' Geographies, September 2022, 1-7. 2022. Caste, space, and schooling in nineteenth century South India, Children's Geographies, Vol. 20, 1-17. 2022.
  2. Divya Kannan, Anandini Dar, Sarah E. Duff, Hia Sen, Shivani Nag and Clovis Berg?re, Childhood, Youth, and Identity: A Roundtable Conversation from the Global South, Journal of Childhood Studies, Vol. 47, 1-31. 2021.
  3. Children's Work for Children: Caste, Childhood, and Missionary Philanthropy in Colonial India", The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Volume 14, Number 2, Spring, 234-253. 2018.
  4. Missionary Encounters: Female Boarding Schools in Nineteenth Century Travancore, in New Perspectives on the History of Gender and Empire: Global and Comparative Approaches, eds. Dorte Lerp and Ulrike Linder London: Bloomsbury Academic, 269-294.

  • Monograph. Contested Childhoods: Caste and Education in Colonial Kerala. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
  • Co-authored with Anandini Dar. Childhood and Youth in India: Engagements With Modernity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
  • 2022. "Recasting Poor Children: Basel Mission Boarding Schools in Colonial Malabar" in Global Perspectiveson Boarding Schools in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries edited by Daniel Gerster and FelicityJensz, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 145-165.

  • A Policy of Absence in India's Schools", Special Issue, Frontline, 26 August 2025
  • Online article: The Journey since 1947-III: Can the Bicycle Come Full Circle in India?, India Forum, 14 September 2022

  1. Paper (Online), Panel - Children's Periodicals and Their Readers: Americal Comparative Literature Association, 1 June 2025
  2. Paper. "The Politics of Caste and School Education in Kerala: Dynamics and Challenges," Language and Culture in a Changing Society - Research to Support Kerala's School Education System, jointly organized by Vakkom Moulavi Foundation Trust, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and Centre for Development Studies, 14-15 January 2025
  3. Paper, “Infamy, Christian Missions, and Colonial Law: The Patna Case of 1889,” Workshop on Protestant Missions and Legal Dynamics in the British Empire, Max Planck Institute, Frankfurt Am Main, Germany, 20–21 June 2024
  4. Paper, “Debating Compulsion: The State and the Poor in Colonial South India”, International Conference on Critical Childhood(s): 100 Years of Children’s Rights, University of Liverpool, 3–5 July 2024
  5. Paper, “Women and Cycling in 20th c India,” Workshop on Towards a History of the Bicycle and Cycling in Colonial and Postcolonial India, ETH Zurich, 13–14 June 2024
  6. Speaker at the Two Day Young Researchers' Conference, Writing the Past, organized by the Department of History, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, Kerala, 22 - 23 July 2022.
  7. Speaker, SNU-SHSS Special Panel Discussion- Reflections on the Russia-Ukraine Crisis, 25 March 2022, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.
  8. Prajnya Gender Talks, Chennai: Writing Histories of Childhood in India, 12 February 2022 (Online) Constructing 'Model' Christians: Basel Mission Boarding Schools in Colonial Malabar at the International Conference on Exclude to Include: Global Perspectives on Boarding Schools, their Participants.
  9. Processes during the 19th and 20th Centuries, November 5th/6th, Munster, Germany, 2020 (Online) LSE International History Research Seminar 18 November 2020 (Online).

  • Along with Dr. Sruthi Muraleedharan (IRGS), I am the Resource Co-ordinator on behalf of SNU for the international project on Gender and Higher Education in India funded by the British Council. The study is led by Brunel University, London, and Savitribhai Phule University, Pune, until April 2023.

  • Invited Member, Kerala State Planning Board-14th Five Year Plan - Working Group on School Education.