Hampshire College

Uditi Sen, assistant professor of South Asian Studies, received her B.A. from Presidency College, Kolkata and her M.A. from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. She completed a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge in 2009.
Uditi’s research interests include state-society relations in independent India, the gendered nature of governance and the complex relationship between displacement and development. Through micro-histories of rehabilitation policies she explores how categories and discourses of governance have impinged upon the lives of vulnerable citizens. Oral historical research forms a vital component of her work, which enables her to give prominence to perspectives ‘from below’ and investigate the interface between memory and identity.

Her publications include the essays ‘Dissident memories: Exploring Bengali refugee narratives in the Andaman Islands’, published in an edited volume on Refugees and the End of Empire: Imperial Collapse and Forced Migration during the Twentieth Century (Palgrave McMillan, 2011) and a forthcoming essay in Modern Asian Studies entitled ‘The myths refugees live by: Memory and history in the making of refugee identity’.

At present she is working on the manuscript of a Bengali book, entitled Deshbhager Prantakatha (Voices from the Margins of a Divided Country) based on her interviews with Bengali refugees in the Andaman Islands.

Recent Courses
CSI-128T: Partition of India (Fall 2013)
CSI-0233: Introduction to History (Fall 2013)
CSI-0148: Understanding 'Modern' South Asia: Society, Politics and the Colonial Inheritance (Spring 2013)
CSI-0269: Gender and Sexuality in South Asia (Spring 2013)