PhD in Asia and the Middle East

We examine the impact of empires in Asia and of Asian cultures on Europe while challenging Eurocentric approaches to the study of the past.

Our expertise ranges across East, South, Southeast and West Asia with our strengths lying in the fields of cultural, social, political, environmental and medical history.

Collectively our concern is with material, cultural and political engagement. We make contributions to area studies as well as to debates about the causes and consequences of globalisation.

Specialisms

• The history of medicine and health in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka (part of a major project funded by The Wellcome Trust)
• The formation and influence of Asian diasporas, notably in Eastern and Southern Africa, the Caribbean and Western Europe
• The social history of space through transport, landscape and ecology; the interaction of European and Asian belief systems
• State formation, with a focus on the practices of colonial bureaucracies
• The origins and effects of political constructs, such as nation, community and empire
• Ideologies, such as anti-imperialism, communism and Bushido