Dr Andrew Halladay

Andrew is a historian of modern South Asia and its relationships with the wider world. Combining methods of cultural and political history, his research interrogates shifts in Indian identity during the colonial period and has been or will soon be published in venues like The Historical Journal and Modern Asian Studies.

Unifying his work is the idea that popular symbols can reveal histories of everyday Indians. Illustrative of this principle is his first book project, A Distant Throne: The British Sovereign in the Mirror of Indian Nationalism, 1919–36, which considers how Indians across the social spectrum creatively repurposed the figure of the British monarch to forward their own political propositions. His articles on the Esperanto movement in India and the (post)colonial afterlife of the warrior king Shivaji (r. 1674–80) similarly demonstrate how public institutions and figures emerged as critical sites for mobilization during the nationalist period.

Awarded the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship and the Metcalf Fellowship in Indian History, Andrew holds a joint PhD in History and South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago and a master’s degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School, where he specialized in the traditions of Islam. Prior to joining LSE, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. Topics for his current and future projects include the role of the 1857 Mutiny in shaping British tourism in India, the afterlife of Buddhist relics discovered in modern-day Pakistan, the experience of the Indian film pioneer Himansu Rai in the German film industry, and the imprisonment of so-called suspicious foreigners in Bombay during the First World War.

Other titles: Careers & Alumni; Cumberland Lodge Programme

Expertise

South Asia in the Modern World, Cultural Memory, The Legacy of the Mughal and Maratha Empires, the Politics of Language, The British Monarchy in India

Recent news:

Dr Anna Cant, Dr Andrew Halladay and Dr Tanya Harmer attend the "Global Histories for a Global Future" conference in Santiago, Chile

At the end of April, Dr Tanya Harmer, Dr Anna Cant, and Dr Andrew Halladay visited Santiago, Chile for the “Global Histories for a Global Future” conference and conversations about collaboration across borders.

Co-hosted by the Institute of History at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile with Universidad de Los Andes and LSE, experts from the institutions formed panels to examine the meaning of citizenship, democracy and power from a transnational historical perspective in both present and future.

These in person discussions further our ongoing knowledge exchange and research alignment with top Latin American universities.

Awards:

• American Institute of Indian Studies Junior Fellowship: Metcalf Fellowship in Indian History (declined due to the Covid pandemic).
• Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship: Delhi and Pune, India: 2019–2020.