Dr Somak Biswas
Contact:
Email: somak.biswas@warwick.ac.uk
Office: 3.72, Third Floor, Faculty of Arts Building
Term-Time Office Hours: Thursdays, 3-4 and Fridays, 2-3 (Teams).
Academic Positions:
- 2026 onwards: Assistant Professor in Modern History, University of Warwick
- 2023-2026: Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
- 2021-2023: Past and Present Fellow, Institute of Historical Research, London
- 2015-2020: PhD in History, University of Warwick
- 2013-2015: MPhil in History, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
- 2013-2014: MA in History, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Centres and Networks:
Teaching
Undergraduate:
HI3I2: HIV/AIDS and the Making of Contemporary Britain: 1980-2010 (final year option module)
HI180: Britain in the Twentieth Century: A Social History (first year option module)
HI176: Mind, Body, and Society: The History of Medicine and Health (first year option-module)
H12K1: History of Now (second year option module)
Postgraduate:
Matters of Life and Death (HI991)
Research
I am a historian of race, sexuality, and migration, with a focus on twentieth century Britain, the British Empire and South Asia.
My current project 'Border Panic' examines how the AIDS epidemic came to be racialised in late twentieth century Britain. It examines the panics and politics generated by the correlation between AIDS and Black and Asian mobilities, and how this went on to shape British prevention, control and aid strategies. It frames AIDS as a geopolitical problem, and linked to questions of mobility, migration and asylum. Some of this research has been published in a special issue on 'Transnational HIV/AIDS Activism in Europe: 1990-2000', for the Journal of the History of Sexuality. My work was recognised by the Modern British Studies Association's 'Best Paper' Award in 2026.
Before coming to Warwick, I held a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship in the University of Cambridge, and a Past and Present Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research, London. I did my MA and MPhil degrees at Jawaharlal Nehru University in India, and my PhD at the University of Warwick.
My first book Passages through India: Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and the Politics of Indophilia (CUP; 2023) offers a critical study of western Indophilia: romanticised engagements with Hindu ideas of India. I argue that ashrams and letters incubated the form and fantasy of Indophilia, and sustained disciples' interest in major Indian cultural and nationalist projects. Focusing on two such projects - the abolition of indentured labour in the British empire and the dissemination of Hinduism in America – I show how Indophile deployments represented and realised elite Hindu claims to culture and respectability, a process that generated deep hierarchies of caste, class, race and gender. My book unifies distinct strands of western discipleship within a shared tradition of Indophilia, and probes their profound consequences, both in India and the West. Passages Through India was awarded the Gladstone Prize in 2024.
I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, UK.
Publications:
Journal Articles
'Remaking Coventry: race, caste and labour in the South Asian diaspora, 1960–1990', Contemporary British History, September 2026.
'HIV/AIDS and the NAZ Project: Race, Sexuality and South Asian AIDS Activism in Britain, 1990-2000', Journal for the History of Sexuality, Vol. 34, Issue 2, May 2025
'Transnational Histories of Collective Action, HIV/AIDS in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s', Journal for the History of Sexuality, Vol. 34, Issue 2, May 2025. (with N Papadogiannis).
Books:
Global Coventry: Migration, Diaspora and Place-Making, Bloomsbury (Forthcoming), (with A Nassar, P Virdee, A Gerritsen).
Passages through India: Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and the Politics of Indophilia, 1890–1940, Cambridge University Press, (Hb 2023; pb 2025) - Winner of the RHS Gladstone Prize 2024
Queer Politics in Times of New Authoritarianisms, Routledge, 2024, (with C Mahn, R Dasgupta)
Book Chapter:
'Languages of longing: Indian gurus, Western disciples and practices of letter-writing', Gurus and Media: Sound, image, machine, text and the digital, UCL Press, Sep 2023.
Reviews:
Hindi Worlds, Hindu Worlds, Oct 2025, India Forum
Looking to the ‘East’, Vol. 60, Issue No. 10, 08 Mar, 2025, Economic and Political Weekly
Public Engagement:
'Who’s in the room? Why faculty diversity matters', 7 March 2025, Varsity
'Shivananda Khan – Champion of LGBTQ immigrants of colour', Feb 2024, BBC History Magazine.
'Podcast: Rethinking Race in British Labour History' (with Caroline Bressey and Ryan Hanley), May 2023, History Workshop
'The Bengal Famine, 1943', Issue 4, April 2021, Modern History Review.
'Dalit movements across India will be a front against hegemonic nationalism', 18 April 2018, Hindustan Times