Arkadeb Bhattacharya

Arkadeb Bhattacharya is a full-time PhD candidate in International History at LSE. His research engages with the formation and functioning of landed and scribal households between precolonial and early colonial eastern India. He examines larger imperial polities from the perspective of minor stakeholders, seeking to make sense of how power dynamics, social order and cultural milieu in localities were negotiated during the political transition of eighteenth-century South Asia.

His doctoral project is supported by LSE PhD Studentship.

Arkadeb holds an MPhil in Medieval Indian History from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His MPhil dissertation looked into the sociopolitical ramifications of travel as manifested in didactic verses composed in Bengali between the sixteenth and eighteenth century. It also addressed the question of historical methodology in dealing with verse literature as a source for history writing in precolonial South Asia. His MPhil was funded by the University Grant Commission’s Junior Research Fellowship.

Before joining Jawaharlal Nehru University, he had completed Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in History from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. His fields of specialisation include early modern history and social history of colonial South Asia. His wider research interest lies in the fields of household history, literary culture and migration studies.

Expertise Details: Early Modern South Asia, British Colonialism, Mughal Empire, Precolonial and Colonial Bengal, Bengali and Sanskrit Literary Culture, 18^th Century in South Asia

Provisional Thesis Title: 'Between Household and State: Landholding Elites in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Eastern India'

Supervisor: Dr Gangandeep S. Sood and Dr Andrew Halladay

Fellowships:

• LSE PhD Studentship, 2025
• UGC Junior Research Fellowship, 2019