Animesh Chatterjee
Kontakt
chatterjee@pg.tu-...
Work
S4|23 11
Dolivostr.15
64293
Darmstadt
Animesh Chatterjee is a historian of colonial Calcutta, researching the multiple and multifaceted political and cultural meanings of electric supply and electrical technologies – lighting, fans and meters – as they were introduced into Calcutta from the West (mainly Britain and USA) in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
As a postdoctoral researcher in the European Research Council-funded project “A Global History of Technology, 1850-2000” at Technische Universität Darmstadt, he is preparing his book manuscript, titled “The Social Life of Electricity in Colonial Calcutta, 1875-1945” (under contract with Routledge). The book studies from different textual, cultural and political angles the interpretations of electricity that historical actors in colonial Calcutta produced through their engagements with the material of politics — British colonialism, Anglo-Indian and Bengali middle-class gentlemanly or bhadralok identities, and nationalist and class politics — and the politics of material — oil and gas lamps, punkahs, electric lighting and fans, and electric meters. When reflecting on the history of electricity in colonial Calcutta, the book points to the necessity of paying attention to both the small, everyday examples of material culture, and the global connections that transcend traditional cultural, political and national boundaries. Chatterjee’s research brings into conversation strands from diverse disciplines, approaches and geographies in exploring how the production and consumption of electric supply and technologies, and the social and cultural engagements with and responses to energy transitions were fostered at the intersections of various transnational and regional trajectories.
Chatterjee received his PhD in History from the Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies at Leeds Trinity University in July 2020.
In addition, Animesh is also working on developing a new research project in environmental and climate history. The project, titled “Weathering Colonial Calcutta”, presents a history of the social construction of the weather by examining “weather” both as a noun and a transitive verb. In this sense, the research offers critical insights into the historically contingent nature of scientific and literary knowledge of the weather, and the braiding of daily lives and “weathering” practices.
Academic
Postdoctoral Researcher, “Global History of Material Culture and Technology, 1850-2000”, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany (funded by the European Research Council), November 2020 onwards
PhD, Leeds Trinity University (degree awarded by the University of Leeds), July 2020
MSc History of Science, Medicine and Technology, Imperial College London, 2013
MSc Communication Engineering, The University of Manchester, 2009
B.E. Electronics and Communication Engineering, Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya, Bhopal, India
Other Professional and Academic Experiences
Postgraduate Representative: School of Arts and Communication Ethics Committee, Leeds Trinity University, November 2018 — July 2019
Postgraduate Representative: Research Degree Sub-Committee, Leeds Trinity University, November 2016 — August 2018
Network Editor, H-Sci-Med-Tech Network, July 2015 — February 2017
Teaching Assistant: Research and Development, Second year undergraduate (Level 5) History module, Leeds Trinity University, September – December 2016
Teaching Assistant: History Dissertation and History Research Report, Third year undergraduate (Level 6) History module, Leeds Trinity University, September – December 2016
Volunteer Explainer, Pimpri Chinchwad Science Park, Pune, India, July 2014 – August 2015
Researcher: Information Age Gallery, Science Museum London, January – July 2013
Blog Editor and Wiki Gardener, Open Knowledge Foundation, 2011–2013
Engineer, SNC-Lavalin Engineering India Pvt Ltd., New Delhi, India, February 2010 – April 2012
Journal Articles
„Rethinking Global History of Technology from Alternative Archives“Technikgeschichte Vol. 88, no. 2 (2021): 202-206. download as pdf (wird in neuem Tab geöffnet)
“‘New Wine in New Bottles’: Class Politics and the ‘Uneven Electrification’ of Colonial India”, History of Retailing and Consumption, Vol. 4, no. 3 (2018): 94-108.
Book Reviews
W. Patrick McCray: Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture, H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews, June 2021. URL www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55967
Susanne Bach and Folkert Degenring (eds.), Dark Nights, Bright Lights: Night, Darkness, and Illumination in Literature (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2015) — for The British Society for Literature and Science
Smritikumar Sarkar, Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India, 1830-1980 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014) – for Technology and Culture (upcoming)
Conference Proceedings
“Sociotechnical Imaginaries of British Colonialism and Indian Nationalism: Domestic Electrification in Urban Colonial India”, Workshop on “Contours of the Future: Technology and Innovation in Cultural Context”, Saint Petersburg, 1-3 November 2017.
Blog Posts
“The many interpretations of Amy Johnson’s achievements: receptions of the aviator in colonial India” – for the Electrifying Women project, 2020.
“The Social Life in Energy Histories”, New Approaches to Energy History, a transatlantic lecture series organised by the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) and the Calgary Institute for the Humanities (CIH), 16 November 2021
“Weathering Colonial Calcutta”, Leeds Centre for History and Philosophy of Science Seminar Series, 10 November 2021
Environmental (Hi)stories from Home, session organised by Historians for Future at the American Society for Environmental History’s annual event, Environmental History Week, 20 April 2021
“Light in the Dark Temple: braiding ‘modernity’ around electricity in colonial Calcutta”, South Asia Workshop Series: Technology, empire and decolonisation in South Asia, sponsored by the Program in South Asian Studies at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and Humanities Council, Princeton University, 23 February 2021
“Conflict and Identity in the Social Life of Electricity in Colonial Calcutta”, Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies (Leeds Trinity University) Seminar, 28 July 2020
“Cultural Resistance to Electricity in Urban Colonial Calcutta, c.1880-1925”, Colonial/Postcolonial New Researchers’ Workshop 2018-19, Institute of Historical Research, London, 22 October 2018
“Conflict, Identity, and the Social Life of Electricity in Urban Colonial Calcutta, 1880-1925”, Royal Historical Society Postgraduate Speakers Series, History Postgraduate Research Seminar, University of Bristol, 10 May 2018
“‘Light in the Dark Temple’: Electricity, religion, and political thoughts in colonial Calcutta”, as part of the panel “‘Sanctifying Electricity’: A Global and Transcultural Examination of Engagements with Electrification, 1880-1940”, Technique and Religion: Technical Cultures, Beliefs, Circulations from Antiquity until Today (International Symposium), Paris, 2 September 2021
“Modernity and its Discontents in the History of Electricity in Colonial Calcutta”, Panel on Modernism and Modernity at the British Association of Modernist Studies (BAMS) Festival of Modernism, 21 June 2021
“(Re)writing the history of electricity in colonial Calcutta”, Workshop on “Understanding social identities, cultural imaginaries and political agendas in the history of electricity and electrification”, Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds, 24 September 2020
Session Chair: “Understanding social identities, cultural and political imaginaries in the history of electricity”, BSHS Global Digital History of Science Festival, 9 July 2020
“The Social Life of Electricity in Colonial Calcutta”, presented as part of the panel “The Electrification of the Global South (II): Loaded with Meaning”, Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) Annual Conference, Milan, 25 October 2019
“Urban, political and cultural environments in late-19th century Bengali anticolonial representations of electricity”, Workshop on “Narrative Science in Techno-Environments: Integrating History of Science with Environmental History and Humanities”, London School of Economics, 18-19 July 2019
“Eating Electricity and Delivering India: Cultural Resistance and Electricity in Late-nineteenth Century Bengali Drama”, as part of the panel “Interplay’s the Thing: Interrogating the Intersections of Theatre and Modern Science”, History of Science Society Annual Conference, Seattle, 1 November 2018
“The ‘Free’ Side of the Meter: Improper use of electricity and middle-class identity in urban Colonial Calcutta”, as part of the panel “Living Physics, Electricity, and Science Popularisation: Episodes of Science in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century India”, History of Science Society Annual Conference, Toronto, 12 November 2017
“Eating Electricity and Delivering India: Electricity and Satire in Colonial Calcutta”, presented as part of the panel “Literature, Anthropology and Technology in the Colonial Project”, British Society for Literature and Science Conference, Bristol, 6 April 2017
“Women & Domestic Electrification in Urban Colonial India”, presented as part of the panel “Women’s Material Cultures and Environments: Indian Perspective”, Women’s History Network Conference, Leeds, 17 September 2016
“New Wine in New Bottles: Marketing Electricity as ‘Everyday Technology’ in Urban Colonial India, c. 1880-1915”, Three Societies Meeting, Edmonton, Canada, June 2016
“Technical Education and the Marketing of Electricity in Colonial India, 1900-1915”, History of Science Society Annual Conference, Chicago, November 2014
Doctoral Scholarship (full fees waiver and maintenance), Leeds Trinity University, 2015-2018
History of Science Society (HSS) Travel Grant, HSS Annual Conference, Seattle, 2018 — HSS Annual Conference, Toronto, 2017 — HSS Annual Conference, Chicago, 2014
Colonial/Postcolonial New Researchers Workshop, invited as a speaker at the Institute of Historical Research, London, 22 October 2018 Royal Historical Society Postgraduate Speakers’ Series, invited as a speaker at the History Postgraduate Research Seminar, University of Bristol, 10 May 2018
Royal Historical Society Conference Grant, British Society for Literature and Science Conference, Bristol, 2017
British Society for the History of Science Conference Grant, Three Societies Conference, Edmonton, Canada, 2016
Summer University Scholarship (travel and accommodation), “Cities and Science: Urban History and the History of Science” summer course, Central European University, Budapest, 29 June — 4 July 2015
Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, September 2017
Methods & Sources for Historical Research, Institute of Historical Research, London, 16-20 January 2017
Visual Sources for Historians, Institute of Historical Research, London, 2-29 February 2016
Exploring the Collections: 19th Century, The British Library London, 22 February 2016
Exploring the Collections: Asian and African, The British Library, London, 18 January 2016