Shaivya Mishra, Ph.D.

RESEARCH INTEREST 

Shaivya Mishra is a historian of anti-colonialism and decolonization in British India, with a specific focus on revolutionary violence and surveillance. She is currently working on her first book titled The Bomb, the Bullet and the Gandhi Cap: Revolutionary Anti-colonialism and Political Surveillance in British India, 1904-1945. Based on her doctoral dissertation at the University of California Berkeley, The Bomb, the Bullet and the Gandhi Cap examines why the process of decolonization in South Asia was marked by the unlikely yet insistent simultaneity of Gandhian non-violence and revolutionary anti-colonialism. 

In addition to this ongoing project, Mishra is also exploring a second book on Gobind Behari Lal—an immigrant from South Asia in the age of Asian Exclusion, a celebrated Ghadar leader, prolific science writer, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1937. Part history of science, part history of race and immigration, part history of anti-colonialism, the book traces how Lal transformed the field of science journalism in the United States between 1930 and 1989, and thus refashioned the 20th century information order. 

EDUCATION

• PhD, Department of History, University of California Berkeley
• M.Phil, Center for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University 
• Master of Arts, University of Delhi
• Bachelor of Arts, Lady Shri Ram College

ACADEMIC CAREER

• 2024-Present: Post-doctoral Researcher, Oriental Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences
• 2023-2024: Lecturer, Department of History, University of California Berkeley

Courses Taught 

Lecturer,  University of California Berkeley, 2023-2024  

• Spring 2024:  History of Immigration to the United States
• Spring 2024:  South Asian Diaspora and Anti-Colonial Politics in a Decolonizing World
• Fall 2023:  South Asian Diaspora and Anti-Colonial Politics in a Decolonizing World
  

Graduate Teaching Assignments, University of California Berkeley, 2014-2023 

• Spring 2023: History 190: Soccer: A Global History of Soccer
• Fall 2022: History 187: The History and Practice of Human Rights 
• Spring 2022: War and Peace: International Relations since 1914 
• Fall 2021: History 103: Bullets, Sedition and Surveillance in the British Empire: Radical Politics and  the Decolonization of South Asia
• Spring 2020: Media Studies 111: Global Media History 
• Fall 2017: History 114A: Medieval and Early Modern India to the Coming of the British 
• Spring 2017: History 114A: Gandhi's India: The Making of Modern South Asia, Graduate Student
• Spring 2016: History 104: The Craft of History 
• Fall 2015: History 11: History of India 
  

Select Awards and Fellowships 

• Summer 2021, 2017: Maharaj Kaul Memorial Grant, Institute for South Asian Studies, Berkeley
• Summer 2021, 2020, 2015-16: Department of History Fellowship for Summer Research, UC Berkeley
• Spring 2021: University of California Dissertation Completion Fellowship
• 2019-2020: Junior Research Fellowship, American Institute of Indian Studies
• 2019-2020: Kumkum Chatterjee Memorial Fellowship in Indian History, American Institute of Indian Studies 
• 2018-2019: Department of History Fellowship for Dissertation Research, UC Berkeley 
• 2014-2017: Department of History Fellowship for Graduate Studies, UC Berkeley
• 2011-2013: University Grants Commission (India), M. Phil Fellowship, JNU

PUBLICATIONS   

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

• ‘Who Needs the Federation? Nation, Empire and the Hindu Right in a Decolonizing (forthcoming, The Journal of History of Ideas)

Public Writing 

• ‘“Through the Pages of a Martyr’s Diary”, July 31st, 2022, The Times of India.  
• “History’s Untold Stories Locked in a School’s Room”, August 16th, 2022, The Times of  India. 
• “Kakori Action and TOI: Case of the Dhobi’s Mark”, August 25th, 2024, The Times of  India. 

CONFERENCE PAPERS AND INVITED LECTURES

• “The Secret Lives of Yadhu Nath and Friends: Violence, Revolution and Underground  Politics in British India”, Trouble in Empire: Colonialism and Subaltern Appropriations in South and Southeast Asia, American Historical Association, January 2023
• “Colonial Law, Land and Education in British India”, Guest lecture for R1B: Great Books, of India, April 15th, 2022, UC Berkeley.  
• Panel organizer and paper presenter, “The Adventures of Detective Luck and Sergeant Chance: The Advent of Political Surveillance in 20th Century India”, Policing Thought, Surveilling Bodies: Everyday Operations of State Power in Colonial India, Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison October 22, 2021.  
• “Spies in the Household: Surveilling Political Dissent in British India”, Rocky Mountain, Interdisciplinary History Conference 2021, Sept 18, 2021.  
• “Spinning Khaddar, Throwing Bombs: The Indian National Congress and the Revolutionary Movement, 1920-32”, South and South East Asian Studies Department, UC Berkeley, Graduate Roundtable Talk on 2nd December, 2020. 
• “Swarajya Party and Hindutva,” Guest lecture for History 114B, Gandhi’s India, March 5th, 2020, UC Berkeley.
• “Gandhi, Jallianwala Bagh and Khilafat,” Guest lecture for History 114B, Gandhi’s India, February 20th, 2020, UC Berkeley.  
• “Revolutionary Lives in Colonial India: Nationalism and Colonial Surveillance in the United Provinces, 1907-1944,” American Institute of Indian Studies, Junior Fellows Conference, Delhi, January 2019. 
• “Colonial Knowledge and Power,” Guest Lecture for History 11, History of India, October 9, 2015, UC Berkeley.