Biography

I am a historian of poverty and social exclusion in colonial India, with a focus on South Indian social reform movements between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The transnational circulation of Indian reform movements in Southeast Asia and the social history of the Tamil diaspora are related areas of interest. My current book project traces the history of prohibition's introduction in India, positioning the subject at the intersection of provincial and national politics, and global temperance reform. A second project examines the impact of temperance and prohibition movements, as a subset of dietary reform, in late colonial India and Malaya.My work has been published in Modern Asian Studies and the Indian Economic and Social History Review. I currently convene courses in alcohol and drug history and modern Indian history at Hong Kong University.

Previous Education

National University of Singapore B.A. (Hons) History 2003