Institut d'études avancées de Nantes
France
fellow
Tapsi MATHUR
2024-2025
Country of origin (home institution)
India
Discipline(s)
Geography; History of ideas; Interdisciplinary Studies
Theme(s)
Cities & States; Cultural Studies; Post-colonialism
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Tapsi Mathur is a historian at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She grew up in India, where she earned her bachelor's degree in history from the University of Delhi and her master's and MPhil degrees in modern history from Jawaharlal Nehru University. She completed her Ph.D. in history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the United States, in 2018.
Her research and teaching interests include science and technology in modern South Asia and the British Empire, as well as transnational, global, and world history. As part of her broader commitment to academic outreach and digital humanities, Tapsi Mathur also serves as co-editor of the oldest South Asian studies blog in the United States, Chapati Mystery.
Research Project
Known Geography: Empire and the Making of a New Discipline
In this project, Tapsi Mathur locates a now-buried tradition of “native” exploration as it emerged in conjunction with the European exploration of South and Central Asia, from its beginnings in the mid-eighteenth century up till the early twentieth century.
She examines this tradition for how the work of these native explorers was represented and reproduced for metropolitan scientific audiences to then track a new lineage for the creation of the modern discipline of geography, implicated very much within the workings of empire.
Research Interests:
Geography; History