History research

Researchers

Dr Arezou Azad

Project overview

The Invisible East programme is a research group that focuses on the 18th-13th Islamicate world in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. They transcribe, translate and digitise some of the oldest texts written in languages including New Persian, Judeo-Persian, Arabic, Bactrian and Sogdian, to shed light on political, financial and legal infrastructures and religious diversity in the region.

They maintain a digital corpus; produce volumes in the series ‘The Islamicate East: New Approaches to Texts and History’, for Edinburgh University Press; host monthly online seminars open to all; share their research with lifelong learners; and deliver workshops in UK schools, and schools globally via Zoom.

The programme is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and European Research Council (ERC) respectively in the Go.Local and PersDoc projects, both of which are led by Senior Research Fellow Dr Arezou Azad.

Researchers

Professor Andrew Hopper (PI)

Dr Ismini Pells

Project funder

Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) https://www.ukri.org/councils/ahrc/

Project overview

Funded by a standard grant from the AHRC (2017–2022), the Civil War Petitions Project provides a free-access website of petitions to the state from veterans and their families for welfare payments as a result of injuries and bereavement sustained during the English Civil Wars. It aims to share information on the human costs of this devastating conflict, which continued to affect communities long after the fighting was over. Four of the project team are based in Oxford Lifelong Learning: Professor Andrew Hopper, the Principal Investigator, Dr Ismini Pells, the Project Manager, and Research Assistants Dr Trixie Gadd and Dr Charlotte Young

Useful links

• Full information can be found on the project website: www.civilwarpetitions.ac.uk
• Short film about the project, dramatized by actors of the Royal Shakespeare Company: https://www.civilwarpetitions.ac.uk/representing-disability-in-shakespeares-world/
• Podcast series: https://www.civilwarpetitions.ac.uk/the-world-turned-upside-down-podcast-series/

Researcher

Yasmin Khan

Funder

British Academy https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/

Project overview

How can historians tell the history of South Asian immigration to Britain and what are the different historical approaches through which this story can be told? My aim in this research will be to bring histories of South Asian migration into dialogue with the new imperial histories of decolonization. I will be researching within a matrix of decolonization and social change in the UK, at a time of the postwar welfare state and the retraction of empire. This project is imagined as a theoretically grounded investigation into the meaning of the category of ‘British South Asian’ alongside an engaging recovery of voices and personal stories. I will be asking how historians can locate individual biographies within larger conceptual histories of race and nation, and illustrating this with narratives of the first pioneering generation of South Asian settlers in the UK.

With thanks to the British Academy for funding this Mid-Career Fellowship.

Related publication

The Raj at War: a People’s History of India’s Second World War (The Bodley Head, 2015) published in the USA as India at War by Oxford University Press (September 2015)