Professor Pippa Virdee, Visiting Professorial Fellow

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My research interests focus on British colonial history, particularly on the Punjab region and the profound impacts of Partition. I examine how this traumatic division continues to influence contemporary South Asia, exploring the lasting legacies of displacement, violence, and resettlement that resonate across generations. A key dimension of my research examines the construction and negotiation of identity in both colonial and postcolonial contexts across India and Pakistan. I am especially interested in how communities reimagined themselves amid the upheavals of empire's end and the creation of new nation-states, and how these processes of identity formation continue to evolve.

Beyond the subcontinent, I am deeply involved in studying the history of the South Asian diaspora in Britain. My work examines how migration from South Asia has transformed the social, cultural, and economic fabric of British cities, such as Leicester and Coventry. These cities exemplify the complex dynamics of migration, settlement, and community building, where South Asian communities have become key to urban identity and growth. Through this research, I intertwine the histories of empire, partition, and diaspora with global Britain.

I currently have four strands of research that traverse South Asia and the UK South Asian Diaspora. They are at different stages, but they broadly capture my current research and teaching interests:

• Global Coventry: Migration, Diaspora and Place-Making, Eds. Gerritsen, Biswas, Nassar and Virdee, (Bloomsbury, under contract).
• Partition@80: History, Heritage and Commemoration in the Digital Age
• Leicester and the changing landscape of Multicultural (Global) Britain
• Knitting the Nation: Women and the Making of Modern Pakistan (monograph)

Publications

• ‘Partitioning India: Dreams, Memories and Legacies’, In Knut A. Jacobsen (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India 2^nd Edition (2023), pp. 25-37.

• With Yaqoob Khan Bangash, ‘Partitioning the University of the Panjab, 1947’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review (2022) 59:4, 423–445.

• ‘Histories and Memories in the Digital Age of Partition Studies’, The Oral History Review (2022) 49:2, 328–345.

• A Very Short Introduction to Pakistan (Oxford University Press, 2021).

• From the Ashes of 1947: Reimagining Punjab (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

• ‘Women and Pakistan International Airlines in Ayub Khan's Pakistan’, The International History Review (2019) 41:6, 1341–1366.

• With Arafat Safdar ‘From Mano Majra to Faqiranwalla: Revisiting the ‘Train to Pakistan’’, South Asia Chronicle (2017) 7, 21–44.

• ‘Dreams, Memories and Legacies: Partitioning India’, in Knut A. Jacobsen (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India (2015), pp. 21-34.

• ‘No-man’s Land’ and the Creation of Partitioned Histories in India/Pakistan’, in Nigel Eltringham and Pam Maclean (eds) Remembering Genocide (Routledge, 2014), pp. 19-37.

• ‘Remembering Partition: Women, Oral Histories & the Partition of 1947’, Oral History (2013), 41: 2, 49–61.

• ‘‘No Home but in Memory’: The Legacies of Colonial Rule in the Punjab’, in Panikos Panayi and Pippa Virdee (eds) Refugees and the End of Empire: Imperial Collapse and Forced Migration during the Twentieth Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 175-195.

• Refugees and the End of Empire: Imperial Collapse and Forced Migration during the Twentieth Century, edited with Panikos Panayi (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

• Coming to Coventry: Stories from the South Asian Pioneers (The Herbert, 2006).

• ‘Negotiating the Past: Journey through Muslim Women’s Experience of Partition and Resettlement’, Cultural and Social History: The Journal of the Social Historical Society (2009) 6: 4, 467–484.

• ‘Partition and the Absence of Communal Violence in Malerkotla’, in Ian Talbot (ed.) The Deadly Embrace: Religion, Politics and Violence in the Indian Subcontinent 1947-2002 (Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 16-35.

• ‘Partition in Transition: Comparative Analysis of Migration in Ludhiana and Lyallpur’, in Anjali Gera Roy and Nandi Bhatia (eds) Partitioned Lives: Narratives of Home, Displacement and Resettlement (Pearson, 2007), pp. 156-173.

• ‘Refugee Experiences of Migration and Post-Partition Resettlement in Lyallpur’, in Sustainable Development Policy Institute (edited), Troubled Times. Sustainable Development and Governance in the Age of Extremes (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 391-404.

• ‘Tranquility and Brutality: The Paradox of Partition Violence in Punjab’, The Historian (2006), 4:1, 26–38.

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