Professor Jay Sarkar
- Professor of Global History of Inequalities (Political & International Studies)
email:
Jayita.Sarkar@glasgow.ac.uk
Gilbert Scott Building, Room 633, Glasgow, G12 8QQ
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6075-4400Biography
Jayita Sarkar is Professor of Global History of Inequalities at the University of Glasgow's School of Social and Political Sciences. Her research and teaching areas are global and transnational histories of decolonisation, capitalism, nuclear infrastructures, South Asia, and the United States.
Her first book, Ploughshares and Swords. India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022), was awarded the 2024 Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies and the 2023 Honorable Mention for Global Development Studies Book Award from the International Studies Association. The book can be freely read here.
Jay is currently completing her second book, Atomic Capitalism. A Global History (under contract with Princeton University Press, America in the World series). It is a 100-year history of nuclear sites, from mining to energy to weapons-testing, retold through histories of capitalism, empire, and decolonisation. To work on Atomic Capitalism, she has been based at Harvard University's Weatherhead Initiative on Global History, at Sciences Po Paris Centre d'Histoire through the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme's DEA visiting professorship, and the Hagley Museum & Library, amongst others.
Her third book-length project is titled, Partitions: A Global History of Territoriality. On adjacent themes of territorial separations, she is co-editing the volume, Partition Machine: Legacies of Territoriality in a Violent World, for Oxford University Press/British Academy (BAC23/220114).
She is a series editor for InterConnections: The Global Twentieth Century, a book series at University of North Carolina Press that is home to innovative global, international, and transregional histories of the long twentieth century.
Before joining Glasgow as Senior Lecturer (tenured associate professor), she was Assistant Professor at Boston University (2017-22), Niehaus Fellow at Dartmouth College, and Fellow at the Weatherhead Initiative in Global History, Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy and Stanton Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. She is currently on policy secondment as a 2024-25 British Academy Global Innovation Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace with the Nuclear Policy Program in Washington, DC (GIF2/100266).
Research interests
Global and transnational histories of
- capitalism
- decolonisation
- technology
- South Asia
- United States
Research groups
- Economic & Social History
Grants
Research & Knowledge Exchange
PI, British Academy Global Innovation Fellowship, 2024-24, £150,000
PI, Stanton Foundation Nuclear Security Grant at University of Glasgow, 2023-25, US$ 49,500
PI, British Academy Grant for “Partition Machine," conference and edited volume for Oxford University Press, 2023-24, £20,000
PI, University of Glasgow Chancellor’s Fund, “Decolonisation Podcast & Archive Fellows,” 2022-24, £4,000
PI, Swiss National Science Foundation, Open Access Book Grant, 2021, PI, 14,000 CHF
External research fellowship: Harvard University, Ernest May Fellowship in History and Policy, 2020, US$ 44,000
PI, Stanton Foundation Applied History Grant at Boston University, 2019, PI, US$ 34,909
External research fellowship: Dartmouth College, US Foreign Policy & International Security Fellowship, 2018, US$ 46,000
PI, Stanton Foundation Nuclear Security Grant at Boston University, 2017, US$ 50,000
External research fellowship: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, Research Fellowship, 2014, 13,000 NOK
External research fellowship: Albert Gallatin Pre-doctoral Fellowship in International Affairs at Yale University, 2013, US$ 14,000
Archival Research
External research fellowship: Henry Belin du Pont Research Fellowship, Hagley Museum & Library, 2023-24, for archival research, US$1,700
External research fellowship: American Institute of Bangladesh Studies Senior Research Fellowship, 2023-25, for archival, oral history, and ethnographic research in Dhaka and Chittagong, US$ 6,700
External research fellowship: Hoover Institution, Silas Palmer research grant for archival research, 2022, US$ 2,500
Postgraduate Study
Hans Wilsdorf Foundation Doctoral Scholarship at Graduate Institute Geneva, 2010–11, 20,000 CHF
Regional Council of Paris Region Masters Scholarship, University of Paris IV-Sorbonne, 2009–10, 10,000 EUR
Supervision
I welcome students interested in the following research themes at BA, MA/MSc, and PhD levels:
The temporal framework is 1890s to 1990s.
- South Asia in the world
- Global Cold War
- Nuclear politics (mining, explosions, energy, and waste)
- US global power
- Histories of capitalism
- Histories of decolonisation
- Histories of technology
Current PhD students:
- Srija Mukhopadhyay (2024-27, Primary Supervisor), "Papercuts: Documentary Regimes and Citizenship among Mobile Communities in the Indo-Bangladesh Border of South Asia, 1946-2019," Supervision with Dr Gareth Mulvey (Sociology) and Dr Ben White (History).
- Rupsa Ghosh (2023-26, Secondary Supervisor), "Gastronomical Histories of the British Empire in Calcutta," Supervision with Dr Souvik Naha (Economic & Social History).
- Yi, Duanyi
How unique was China's Nuclear Strategy ( 1964-1993)
Teaching
At the University of Glasgow:
- ESH 4087, Global South Asia: Honours-level undergraduate course, sole convenor
- SPS 5063: Nuclear Technologies in History, Politics, and Society: Graduate course, sole convenor
- ESH 5069, Decolonisation & International Economic Relations: Graduate course, sole convenor
- ESH Level 1A: Team-taught module; contributor on themes of global histories of inequalities, including, colonialism, slavery, and empires.
- ESH Level 1B: Team-taught module; contributor on themes of global histories of inequalities, including, anticolonialism, development politics, and cold wars.
Prior teaching, at Boston University:
- Global South Asia
- History, Policy, & Statecraft [historical methods course]
- International Nuclear Politics
- History of International Relations since 1945 [core undergraduate course]
- Global Decolonization Research Internships [co-curricular]
Professional activities & recognition
Prizes, awards & distinctions
- 2024: Winner, Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize for first books on South Asia (Association for Asian Studies)
- 2023: Honourable Mention, Global Development Studies Best Book Award (International Studies Association)
- 2018: Grand Prize Winner for Best Article of the Year (Doreen and Jim McElvany Nonproliferation Challenge)
- 2022: Elected Fellow (Royal Historical Society)
- 2022: Elected Fellow (Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland)
Research fellowships
- 06/2022 - 08/2022: University of Edinburgh, Institute for the Advanced Studies in the Humanities
- 09/2020 - 06/2021: Harvard University, Weatherhead Initiative on Global History
- 09/2020 - 06/2021: Harvard Kennedy School, Ernest May Fellowship in History & Policy
- 09/2018 - 06/2019: Dartmouth College, Niehaus Postdoctoral Fellow
- 08/2016 - 06/2017: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, SNSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow
- 09/2015 - 05/2016: Harvard Kennedy School, Managing the Atom Postdoctoral Fellowship
- 08/2014 - 06/2015: Harvard Kennedy School, Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellowship
Grant committees & research advisory boards
- 2024 - 2026: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Marty Sherwin Fellowship Selection Committee Member
- 2021 - 2024: Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, William Appleman Williams Emerging Scholar Research Grant Committee
- 2022 - present: Arms Control Association, Board of Directors
- 2020 - 2021: American Institute of Bangladesh Studies, Board of Trustees
- 2018 - 2020: Society for the History of Technology, Joan Cahalin Robinson Prize Committee Member
- 2019 - 2019: American Academy of Berlin, Grant Application Reviewer
- 2017 - 2017: Carnegie Corporation of New York, Grant Application Reviewer
- 2015 - 2015: Smith Richardson Foundation, Grant Application Reviewer
Editorial boards
- 2022 - present: Global Nuclear Histories, McGill-Queen’s University Press (book series)
- 08/2022 - 02/2024: Cold War History (journal)
Professional & learned societies
- 2024 - 2027: Committee on Digital Resources and Archival Sharing, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
- 2020 - 2023: Internationalization Task Force Member, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
- 2021 - 2021: Officer-at-Large, Diplomatic Studies Section (DPLST), International Studies Association
- 2018 - 2020: Officer-at-Large, South Asia in World Politics Section (SAWP), International Studies Association
- 2019 - 2019: Program Committee Member, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
Selected international presentations
- 24/04/2023: Washington History Conference (Woodrow Wilson Center and American Historical Association, Washington, DC, USA)
- 11/04/2023: Conversations on South Asia (Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA)
- 28/11/2022: International History & Politics Forum, IHP/ANSO (Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland)
- 10/03/2022: Book Talk, CISAC, Nuclear Reading Group (Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA)
- 14/02/2022: Weatherhead Initiative on Global History Seminar (Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA)
- 18/11/2021: Book Talk, Security Studies Seminar (Carnegie India, New Delhi, India)
- 07/04/2021: Science and Global Security Seminar (Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA)
- 30/11/2020: Science, Technology, and Society Circle (Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA)
Additional information
PGR Director, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, July- December 2023
Convenor, Partition Machine, British Academy Conference, University of Glasgow, August 2023
Director, Decolonisation through Archives, Scotland @ University of Glasgow
