I am a Junior Research Fellow in History and Welfare Dean at St Hugh’s. I completed my DPhil in History from Trinity College, Oxford supported by the Clarendon and Beit Funds, a MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from St Edmund’s College, Cambridge supported by a Prize Research Studentship from the Joint Centre for History and Economics, and an AB in History with minors in African Studies, Latin American Studies, and South Asian Studies from Princeton University. I was also a recipient of a 2026 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions COFUND Postdoctoral Fellowship from the European Commission.
I am a historian of modern South Asia, with particular interests in Buddhist intellectual and religious history, colonialism, nationalism, and the relationship between religion and political thought. My research examines how Buddhism has been understood, contested, and transformed across South Asia, particularly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I am interested in the ways religious ideas travel across geographical and political boundaries, how intellectuals respond to colonialism and social change, and how competing interpretations of the past shape contemporary identities. I have nevertheless also published work on a variety of other topics, including Boer internment during the South African War and political conflict in British Guiana. I am currently working on several monograph projects, including a history of modern South Asian Buddhism and on the lives and contributions of its key thinkers, the place of South Asia in the development of Global Buddhism, an exploration of the intersection of Eastern and Western spirituality and religion at the turn of the twentieth century, an analysis of how shame has historically featured in language education, and a translation of the Sinhalese writings of the prominent Sri Lankan Buddhist revivalist, Anagarika Dharmapala.
I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA), and I have taught across a variety of undergraduate and master’s papers at Oxford. I have taught the Theory and Methods paper for History MSt and MPhil students and the following undergraduate papers: The Global Twentieth Century, 1930–2003 (EWF14); The Middle East in the Age of Empire, 1830–1971 (FS22); A Global War, 1914–1920 (FS27); and From Gandhi to the Green Revolution: India, Independence and Modernity, 1947–73 (SS22). I also teach a paper on British imperial history for the Middlebury-CMRS Oxford Humanities Program.
I am strongly committed to widening access to higher education and ensuring that students from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds can study at Oxford. As an Outreach Tutor for the Faculty of History, I have delivered workshops and talks for primary and secondary school students, introducing them to historical research and university-level study. I have worked as an Access Tutor for UNIQ, Oxford’s access programme for state-school students from underrepresented backgrounds, and as a Course Tutor for Opportunity Oxford, supporting incoming undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds as they prepare for university. I was also previously a Senior Tour Guide for Uncomfortable Oxford, a social enterprise that encourages public discussion of Oxford’s connections to imperialism, inequality, and contested histories. I previously served as a Researcher-in-Residence at the Cheney School, a local state secondary school in Oxford, working with teachers to enrich the History curriculum and introduce pupils to historical research. I am equally interested in communicating historical research to wider audiences, and my public writing has appeared in the BBC History Magazine, History Workshop Online, the Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, and the Institute of Historical Research’s blog On History.
I previously co-convened Oxford’s South Asian Intellectual History Seminar, and I currently serve as a Book Reviews Editor for the Journal of Global Buddhism.
Selected Publications:
- “Ceylonese Chronicles, Chinese Pilgrims, and the Nineteenth-Century Hierarchy of Texts in the Construction of Early Buddhist Geography,” Journal of Religious History (2026): 1-23.
- “Gandhi’s Buddhism: Assimilation, Theologisation, and Politicisation by a ‘Modern Buddha’,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3 (2026): 1-21.
- Review of Sujatha Meegama, Temples to the Buddha and the Gods: Transnational Drāviḍa Tradition of Architecture in Sri Lanka. Architectural History 69 (2026): 5-6.
- “Sovereignty, Circulation, and Argument in a Polycentric Buddhist World,” Global Intellectual History (2026): 1-19.
- Review of Sonia Faleiro, The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia. Journal of Global Buddhism 27, 1 (2026): 109-12.
- Review of Sunil Bastian, State Formation and Conflicts in Sri Lanka. Polity (2026): [1-6].
- “The Making and Unmaking of a Sri Lankan Buddha,” Histories 6, 3 (2026): 42 [1-19].
- “Resilient Nationalism: Cheddi Jagan, the People’s Progressive Party, and the Limits of Race, Religion, and Anticommunism in British Guiana, 1953–1964,” Journal of Caribbean History 60, 1 (2026): 112-43.
- Review of Tamara Fernando, Shallow Blue Empire: A History of Pearl Diving in the Indian Ocean, 1850-1930. South Asian History and Culture (2026): 1-5.
- “From Inclination to Immersion: Reconstructing B.R. Ambedkar’s Long Road to Buddhism,” South Asian History and Culture (2026): 1-20.
- Review of Bardwell Smith, Precarious Balance: Sinhala Buddhism and the Forces of Pluralism. Journal of Global Buddhism 26, 1 (2025): 63-66.
- Review of Bob van der Linden, Romantic Nationalism in India: Cultivation of Culture and the Global Circulation of Ideas. Contemporary South Asia 33, 3 (2025): 528-29.
- “Venerating Bodh Gaya: The Return of the Ceylonese to Buddhism’s Holiest Site,” Religions 16, 9 (2025): 1105 [1-14] (part of a special issue on Pilgrimage: Diversity, Past and Present of Sacred Routes).
- Review of Annabella Pitkin, Renunciation and Longing: The Life of a Twentieth-Century Buddhist Saint. Contemporary Buddhism (2025): 1-3.
- “Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933),” St Andrew’s Encyclopaedia of Theology (2025): 1-33.
- Review of Gitanjali Surendran, Democracy’s Dhamma: Buddhism in the Making of Modern India, c. 1890–1956. Journal of Religious History 49, 2 (2025): 281-82.
- “The Caste Negotiations of Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933) in Colonial Ceylon,” CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion 6, 2 (2025): 257-76 (part of a special issue on Caste in Sri Lanka).
- Review of Alexander McKinley, Mountain at a Center of the World: Pilgrimage and Pluralism in Sri Lanka. Journal of Global Buddhism 25, 2 (2024): 220-23.
- Review of Neena Mahadev, Karma and Grace: Religious Difference in Millennial Sri Lanka. Contemporary South Asia 32, 3 (2024): 452-53.
- Review of Douglas Ober, Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India. Journal of Religious History 48, 2 (2024): 254-56.
- Review of Justin Henry, Ravana’s Kingdom: The Ramayana and Sri Lankan History from Below. Journal of Global Buddhism 24, 2 (2023): 114-17.
- Review of Shruti Kapila, Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age. South Asian History and Culture 14, 3 (2023): 371-73.
- Placing the Origins of the Buddha: An Island, Its People, and an Orientalist Odyssey (Cambridge Scholars, 2022).
- “The Proteas Plucked for a Lotus Land: Ceylon’s Boer Internment Experience, 1900-1902,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 50, 5 (2022): 915-43.
- “Polemical Publications and Socioeconomic Shake-Ups: Nineteenth-Century Ceylonese Buddhist Revivalism from Migettuwatte Gunananda to Anagarika Dharmapala,” Buddhist Studies Review 39, 1 (2022): 49-65.
- Review of Richard Jaffe, Seeking Sakyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism. Contemporary Buddhism 21, 1-2 (2020): 446-48.
