Dr Souvik Naha
- Senior Lecturer in Imperial and Post-colonial History (Economic & Social History)
email:
Souvik.Naha@glasgow.ac.uk
pronouns:
He/him/his
Room no. 208, Lilybank House, Bute Gardens, Glasgow, G12 8RT
Biography
I obtained my BA in History from Presidency College (Kolkata) and my MA and MPhil in Modern History from Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi).
My doctoral research at ETH Zurich, funded by a Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship, examined how journalists and broadcasters popularised cricket as an ideal everyday leisure activity in twentieth-century Calcutta. In doing so, it shed light on the dynamics of cultural transfer and the afterlife of colonialism in a decolonising society, integrating the histories of everyday life, popular culture, regional politics, and the transnational circulation of ideas in a postcolonial context. This research led to a monograph that explored how cricket gave the Bengalis of postcolonial Calcutta a tool to understand and form themselves as a cultural community, creating new social relationships.
After completing my PhD, I taught History at the West Bengal State University and the Indian Institute of Management Rohtak. Prior to joining Glasgow, I held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship at Durham University. This project extended my work on decolonisation by examining cricket’s significance as a tool of reshaping Indo-British relationship after India’s independence, focussing on issues of race, mobility, migration, diplomacy, and environment. This research has laid the foundation for my second monograph, which will examine the role of sport in recasting the British World and the Commonwealth in the 1940s-60s.
Research interests
- The British Empire since the eighteenth century
- Decolonisation and postcoloniality
- Modern South Asia
- Sport
- Medicine and public health
- Mass media, advertising and visual culture
Teaching
Undergraduate
Britain, 1770-1914
Britain Since 1914
Honours
The British Empire and India, 1757-1947
Postgraduate
Sport in the Global Economy
Professional activities & recognition
Research fellowships
- 2019 - 2021: Marie Curie Fellowship (IF-MSCA-EU-H2020)
- 2013 - 2017: Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship
Editorial boards
- 2019 - -: Sport in Society
- 2019 - -: Sport in History
- 2013 - -: Soccer & Society
- 2019 - -: Asian Journal of Sport History & Culture
Professional & learned societies
- 2020 - 2023: Panelist for Lord Aberdare Literary Prize, British Society of Sports History
Selected international presentations
- 2022: Sport and Social Justice (Leeds Beckett University)
- 2022: British Society of Sports History (De Montfort University)
- 2022: Sport, Power and Politics (University of Aveiro)
- 2022: Medical Identities in Global History (University of Oxford)
- 2019: The Olympics and the Asian Century (Zhejiang Normal University)
- 2019: Rise Up, Take a Knee: Popular Culture and Protest in Decolonising Societies (Utrecht University)
- 2019: What’s Sex Got to Do with It? Gender, Sexuality, & Eugenics (Oxford Brookes University)
- 2019: India and Pakistan: The Formative Phase, 1947-c.1960 (University of London)
- 2019: British Association for South Asian Studies (Durham University)
- 2018: Moments, Metaphors, Memories: Defining Events in the History of Soccer (University of Oxford)
- 2017: Golden Games: Sport and Diplomacy in East Asia and beyond (National University of Singapore)
- 2017: British Society of Sports History (University of Worcester)
- 2016: Transnational Working Group for the Study of Gender and Sport (Ruhr University)
- 2016: The President, The Secretary and The Minister: Selected Biographies from International Sports Leaders (Olympic Study Centre Barcelona)