Rate My Professor Durba Ghosh

Durba Ghosh is Professor of History in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University, having joined the faculty in 2005. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2000, M.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994, and B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1989. Affiliated with Asian Studies and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, she previously directed the latter and currently serves as the Taylor Family Director of the Society for the Humanities. Ghosh's research centers on modern South Asia, gender, and colonialism, with a focus on British imperialism in the Indian subcontinent. She examines conjugal relationships between colonial officials and local women, underground radical political movements and violence against the colonial state, cultural aspects of law and governance, and the history of commemorative monuments and public memory.

The author of two monographs, Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Gentlemanly Terrorists: Political Violence and the Colonial State in India, 1919–1947 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Ghosh also co-edited Decentring Empire: Britain, India and the Transcolonial World (Orient Longman, 2006). Her extensive publications include articles in the Historical Journal ("Stabilizing history: statues, monuments, and memorials in Curzon’s India," 2023), Women’s History Review ("Can an archive be revolutionary?", 2023), Journal of Asian Studies, Gender & History, Itinerario, and Modern Asian Studies, addressing revolutionary women, Gandhi and terrorists, colonial archives, gender subjectivity, household crimes in Calcutta, and imperial strategies against terrorism. On sabbatical in 2023–24, she is completing Moving Monuments, which traces commemorative statues relocated from Britain to Indian empire sites. Ghosh received the Robert A. & Donna B. Paul Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising (2023–24). She is associate editor for South Asia at the Journal of Asian Studies, co-chair of the 2025 Association of Asian Studies conference, and has served on committees for the American Historical Association, Association of Asian Studies, and others, contributing to fields of transnational history and decolonial public history.