Anubhab Chatterjee
DPhil Student - Wadham College
anubhab.chatterjee@wadham.ox.ac.uk
Research Topic: Engendering Difference: Colonialism and the Making of Calcutta’s Unequal Urban Ecology
Supervisor: Mark Harrison
My doctoral research examines the environmental history of colonial Calcutta, exploring how urban infrastructure, public health, and systems of governance shaped unequal experiences of the city. Focusing on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the project investigates how environmental risks such as disease, flooding, and inadequate infrastructure were distributed across different communities, and how these inequalities were shaped by colonial and indigenous forms of urban authority.
Drawing on both colonial archives and Bengali-language sources, the research brings together environmental, urban, and medical history to understand how the making of the modern city was also a process of producing and negotiating social difference and unequal exposure to environmental risk.
Prizes and Funding
- Oxford Richards Graduate Scholarship, University of Oxford (2026-present)
