Jayeeta Sharma is an Assistant Professor in History and Global Asia Studies at the University of Toronto. After doing a BA, MA, and MPhil in History from the University of Delhi, she won a Commonwealth Scholarship to do her PhD at Cambridge University.

Subsequently, she taught at universities in India, the United States, and Canada. Her academic interests include migration, labour, gender, food, urban, and post-colonial cultures.

Her first book, Empire's Garden: Assam and the Making of India (Duke University Press and Permanent Black, 2011) examines the intersections of colonial tea capitalism with identity contestations in modern and contemporary India.

This work links the study of coolie labour and internal migration in South Asia to that of imperial commodities, cultural nationalism, and post-colonial politics of race, language, and ethnicity.

Her new research project studies imperial labour mobilization, Anglo-Indian migrations, and transnational Himalayan imaginings and circulation involving sites as diverse as Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand. This project is supported by a Standard Research Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Credentials

B.A. (Lady Shri Ram)
M.A. (Hindu College Delhi)
M. Phil. (Delhi)
Ph.D. (Cambridge)

Areas of Research

• Social and Cultural History
• 'New Imperial' History
• Anthropology and History
• Post-Colonial Studies
• Food History
• Labour History
• South Asian Studies
• Race
• Gender and Family History
• Transnational and Diaspora Studies