Faculty at School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Kaustubh Mani Sengupta

Kaustubh Mani Sengupta

Assistant Professor


Contact Information

  • Urban History of South Asia
  • Early Colonial State in India
  • History of Infrastructure and Space
  • History in the Vernacular

  • 2014: PhD, Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
  • 2008:  MA (Modern History), Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
  • 2006:  BA (History), Presidency College, Kolkata.

 

  • February 2016—July 2023: Assistant Professor, Department of History, Bankura University.
  • June 2022: Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Modern Indian Studies, Georg-August Universitat, Goettingen, Germany.
  • 2018—2020: Visiting Faculty, Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata.
  • February 2015—January 2016: Guest Faculty at Department of History, Diamond Harbour Women’s University, West Bengal.
  • October 2013—October 2015: Post-doctoral fellow at the Max Weber Stiftung-funded Transnational Research Group (TRG) on “Poverty Reduction and Policy for the Poor between the State and Private Actors: Education Policy in India since the Nineteenth Century.” Topic: “Refugee Settlements and the Role of Education in Post-Partition West Bengal”. TRG members: Jawaharlal Nehru University, German Historical Institute, London, (GHIL), Centre for Modern Indian Studies, Goettingen, (CeMIS), Centre for Study in Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi.

  1. ‘Land, Property Relations, and Urban Planning: New Histories from Colonial India’, History Compass, Vol. 20, Issue 3, March 2022.
  2. ‘William Tolly and his Canal: Navigating Calcutta in the Late-Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies, vol. 5, no. 1 (2021), pp. 68-92.
  3. ‘Community and Neighbourhood in a Colonial City: Calcutta’s Para’, South Asia Research, vol. 38, no. 1 (2018), pp. 40-56.
  4. ‘Education, Training and Refugee Rehabilitation in Post-partition West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. LIII, no. 4 (2018), pp. 58-65.
  5. ‘The New Fort William and the Dockyard: Constructing Company’s Calcutta in the late Eighteenth Century’, Studies in History, vol. 32, no. 2 (2016), pp. 231-256.
  6. ‘Bazaars, Landlords and the Company Government in late Eighteenth-century Calcutta’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 52, no. 2 (2015), pp. 121-146.

  • (co-editor, with Tista Das) Rethinking the Local in Indian History: Perspectives from Eastern India (London, New York: Routledge, 2021).
  • (co-editor, with Pratyay Nath, in Bengali) Itihaser Bitarka, Bitarker Itihas: Ateeter Bharat O Ajker Gabeshona [Debates of History, History of Debates: India’s Past and Present Research] (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 2021

Book Chapters:

  • ‘Between River and the Wasteland: Contesting Views regarding Sewage Disposal in Colonial Calcutta’, in Joseph Heathcott, Jonathan Soffer, and Rae Zimmerman (eds), Urban Infrastructure: Historical and Social Dimensions of an Interconnected World (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022).
  • (in Bengali) ‘Atharo Satak: Boiplobik Badal na Dharabahikota?’ [Eighteenth Century: Revolutionary Change or Continuity?], in Nath and Sengupta (eds), Itihaser Bitarka, Bitarker Itihas: Ateeter Bharat O Ajker Gabeshona [Debates of History, History of Debates: India’s Past and Present Research] (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 2021).
  • ‘Development of Calcutta as a Commercial Metropolis in the Nineteenth-century’, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal, 1700-1950 (3 vol. project of The Asiatic Society, Calcutta), (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2020).
  • ‘Making the City Beautiful: Open Space, Imperial Culture, and the Modern Market’, in Anuradha Roy and Melitta Waligora (eds.), Kolkata in Space, Time and Imagination (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2019).
  • ‘The Port of Calcutta in the Imperial Network of South and South-East Asia, 1870s-1950s’, in Brett Neilson, Ned Rossiter and Ranabir Samaddar (eds.), Logistical Asia: The Labor of Making a World Region (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 23-46.
  • ‘Taking Refuge in the City: Migrant Population and Urban Management in Post-Partition Calcutta’, in Ranabir Samaddar (ed.), Migrants and the Neoliberal City, (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2018). 
  • (in Bengali) ‘Unish Satake Bangalir Madyapan ebong Battala’ [Battala and the Consumption of Alcohol in Nineteenth-century Bengal], Anustup, Battala Special Issue, year 45, no. 4, 2011; reprinted in Anil Acharya and Adrish Biswas (eds.), Bangalir Battala (vol. 1), Kolkata: 2012.