Department of History
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About the department
Research
Lifelong Learning
Dr Jonathan Saha
Lecturer in Modern History
Office: 2.3, 26-27 St Michael's Park
Phone: +44 (0)117 92 88118
Email: J.Saha@bristol.ac.uk
Research interests
My research to date has focused on the history of colonial Burma at the turn of the twentieth century. In particular, I have explored corruption within the subordinate branches of the administration arguing that through this misconduct the colonial state was performed and experienced as an everyday entity. In addition, I have studied the history of psychiatry and British conceptions of madness in the colony.
Research Supervision
I would be very happy to supervise dissertations exploring colonialism in South and Southeast Asia, especially topics related to the history of medicine, insanity, crime, corruption, gender, violence and the ‘everyday state’.
Teaching
I have taught a number of team-taught outline and skills units, 'Introduction to the British Empire' and 'Approaching the Past' to first year students and 'Re-thinking History' to second year students.
In addition I offer the following undergraduate units:
- The Rise and Fall of European Colonialism: Western Power in South East Asia from Vasco de Gama to the War in Vietnam (Second year Lecture Response Unit)
- Resistance and Nationalism in Colonial South and Southeast Asia (Second year Special Field Unit)
- Race and Criminality in Colonial South and Southeast Asia (Third year Lecture Response Unit)
- Decolonising Health (Third year Reflective History Unit)
- Colonial Disorders in British Burma (Third year Special Subject Unit)
For postgraduate students I offer my unit Madness and Empire, and I have taught on the team-taught units Themes in the History of Colonialism and Research Methods.
Selected publications
Law, Disorder and the Colonial State: Corruption in Burma c.1900 (Palgrave Macmillan, Forthcoming).
‘“Uncivilized Practitioners”: Medical Subordinates, Medico-Legal Evidence and Misconduct in Colonial Burma, 1875-1907’, South East Asia Research (Forthcoming, 2013).
‘A Mockery of Justice? Colonial Law, the Everyday State and Village Justice in the Burma Delta, c. 1890-1910’, Past and Present, no. 217 (Forthcoming, November 2012).
‘Madness and the Making of a Colonial Order in Burma’, Modern Asian Studies (Firstview Access, Forthcoming in Print).
‘Histories of Everyday Violence in British India’, History Compass, vol. 9, no. 11 (2011), 844-853.