Dipesh Chakrabarty

Dipesh Chakrabarty is a social historian whose research has transformed understanding of nationalist and postcolonial historiographies, particularly in the context of modern South Asia.

His groundbreaking book Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference systematically investigated how (and in what sense) European ideas that were labelled ‘universal’ were drawn from very specific intellectual traditions and historical contexts. It was reviewed as a ‘masterful re-examination of rationality, universality, and difference in the postcolonial world [which] should prove inspiring for serious historians of all lands’.

Chakrabarty is currently the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College. He is also a faculty fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, an associate faculty of the Department of English, holds a visiting professorial fellowship at the Research School of Humanities at the Australian National University, and an honorary professorial fellowship with the School of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

His other books include: Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal 1890-1940 and Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies. He has also edited (with Carol Breckenridge, Homi Bhabha, and Sheldon Pollock) Cosmopolitanism and (with Bain Attwood and Claudio Lomnitz) The Public Life of History.