About

I am Senior Lecturer in global and South Asian history, with particular expertise in late colonial and early postcolonial India. My research focuses on citizenship and democracy, caste and 'tribe', and borders and territory, principally in the context of India’s independence and partition. Simultaneously, I continue to be interested in global histories of the British South Asian diaspora, particularly in the context of industrial disputes and anti-racism activities in the 1960s.

I am also the programme lead for MA History at Derby.

Before arriving at Derby in 2019, I held lectureships at the Universities of Sheffield, Exeter, Kent and Loughborough, as well as a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of York.

Teaching responsibilities

I currently teach on the following modules:

History BA

• History Foundation
• Historical Methods and Sources
• Derby and the World
• Empires, Migrants and Global Mobility
• Research in Practice
• The Cold War: Global Conflict, Culture and Diplomacy
• Independent Study
• India, Empire, Diaspora

History MA

• Research Methods in History
• Current Debates in Global Heritage

Public History and Heritage MA

• Current Debates in Global Heritage

Research interests

My previous research traced the impact of decolonisation and the transition from colonial rule to independence on ideas about and the workings of democracy, citizenship and community amongst Indian society. My doctoral project drew upon the mechanics of state-society relations at the ‘everyday’ level to make inferences about the nature of citizenship and democracy during independence and partition, a moment of great historical change, fear and uncertainty on the Indian subcontinent. This research informed an updated monograph that draws upon and revises some of its central themes. The project also shaped a number of other research publications (see below).

You can read a recent review of my monograph in the context of other scholarship on postcolonial citizenship in India here.

My current research focuses on the policing of 'criminal tribes' and ḍakait ('bandits') in central India in the late colonial period. By focusing upon the 'minor' state of India, it reveals the complex roles taken up by ḍakait within the local political economy, often in tandem with local state representatives, illustrating the fragmented nature of sovereignty in late colonial contexts. In doing so, it seeks to challenge older histories that understand banditry primarily as evidence of state evasion or resistance, looks to complicate existing emphases on wider institutional frameworks that classified such communities as 'criminal tribes', and ultimately re-centres ḍakait and ḍakaitī ('banditry') within the historical record. This research has so far led to a journal article in The Historical Journal.

My future research concerns the global context that informed left-leaning politics, industrial disputes and anti-racism activism amongst the South Asian diaspora in the Midlands during the 1960s. The project will be shaped by tracing interactions between individuals, ideas, and institutions in the Midlands and beyond, as well as analysing analogies in the rhetoric they employed. In particular, I am interested in how members of the South Asian diaspora engaged with major developments in the Indian subcontinent during these years, particularly as they related to Sino-Indian relations, decolonisation, and the wider Cold War (e.g., the Indo-China War of 1962 and Naxalbari in 1967).

Membership of professional bodies

• Member of the British Association of South Asian Studies
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Qualifications

• BA (Hons) History - University of Leeds
• MA Modern History - University of Leeds
• PhD on Citizenship, Community and the State in Western India, 1930s-1950s - University of Leeds

Recent conferences

• CivicLAB Symposium, University of Derby: 'Derby and the World: Revisiting Histories of Empire, Decolonisation and Migration at Derby Museums', 8 July 2022
• Identity, Culture and Representation Seminar Series, University of Derby: '"The Land of the Cattle Thief": Rethinking Sovereignty, Territory and Tribe in Late Colonial India', 5 February 2020
• Book launch, University of Sheffield, ‘Citizenship, Community and Democracy in India: From Bombay to Maharashtra, c. 1930-1960’, 11 December 2018
• Re-centring the ‘Pariah’: Caste, Tribe and Criminality in South Asia, University of Leeds:‘Pariahs, Peripheries and Territoriality during the Postcolonial Transition’, 26-27 June 2017
• 31st British Association of South Asian Studies Annual Conference, University of Nottingham: ‘Partition, Linguistic Reorganisation and Provincialisation’, 19-21 April 2017
• Imperial and Global Seminar Series, University of Exeter: ‘Region, Reservations and Government Recruitment: Democracy and Community in Late Colonial India’, 20 January 2016
• 29th British Association of South Asian Studies Annual Conference, University of Portsmouth: ‘Conceptualising Human Security Historically: Adivasi “Uplift”, Language and the Census in 1950s Western India’, 9 April 2015

In the media

I have been actively involved in communicating my research to public audiences. Most recently, this has involved collaborative activities with Derby Museums in relation to objects in their collections and galleries. In May 2022, I held two workshops on 'Derby and the World', which discussed these objects as illustrative of larger global and imperial histories.

In November 2020 I participated in the 'Free Thinking' series on BBC Radio Three for an episode entitled 'Postcolonial Derby'. This was linked to the Being Human Festival 2020, for which I also contributed a podcast on 'Curzon of Kedleston and the History of India' as part of the series on 'Global Derbyshire in 10 Objects'. I also discussed Curzon's time in India and its impact upon his subsequent political career in a talk with National Trust volunteers at Kedleston Hall in February 2020.

In October 2017, I appeared at Sheffield’s 'Off the Shelf' annual literature festival as an invited guest of the local Hindu Samaj, where I discussed Indian and Pakistani independence in the context of the life and writings of the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore.

In August 2017, I took part in a series of events to commemorate 70 years since the independence of India, including acting as an analyst during a special discussion on individual stories of displacement experienced by ordinary people caught up in partition violence. This discussion was broadcast live on BBC Radio Sheffield as part of 'Eastern Air', a weekly radio programme dedicated to the city’s South Asian diaspora.

Recent publications

• O. Godsmark, 'Fragmented Sovereignty, Ḍakaitī (Banditry), and "Criminal Tribe" in a "Minor" State of Late Colonial India', The Historical Journal (in press)
• O. Godsmark, ‘“Civis Indianus Sum”? Ambedkar on Democracy and Territory during Linguistic Reorganisation (and Partition)’, Modern Asian Studies, 54.2 (2020), 384-431
• O. Godsmark, ‘Searching for Synergies, Making Majorities: The Demands for Pakistan and Maharashtra’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 42.1 (2019), 115-133
• O. Godsmark, Citizenship, Community and Democracy in India: From Bombay to Maharashtra, c. 1930-1960 (London: Routledge, 2018)
• O. Godsmark, 'Citizenship, Reservations and the Regional Alternative in the All-India Services, ca. 1928-1950', South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 38.2 (2015), 156-170
• O. Godsmark and W. Gould, ‘Clientelism, Community and Collaboration: Loyalism in Nineteenth-Century India’, in Loyalism and the Formation of the British World, 1775-1914, ed. by A. Blackstock and F. O’Gorman (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2014)

Courses

• History MA