Prachi Deshpande (born 14 December 1972) is an Indian historian and Associate Professor in

History History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC) is a social science and humanities research and teaching institute in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. History Established in 1973 jointly by the Indian Council of Social Science Research and ...

Education

Deshpande completed her undergraduate and post graduate education in

at Fergusson College, Pune and

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU; ISO: Javāharalāla Neharū Viśvavidyālaya) is a public research university located in Delhi, India. It was established in 1969 and named after Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister. The university ...

respectively before moving to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

to pursue her PhD from Tufts University, Medford, MA.

Career

Post her doctoral education at Tufts University, MA in 2002, Deshpande served as an assistant professor at several institutions in the United States including

Colorado State University Colorado State University (Colorado State or CSU) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Fort Collins, Colorado, United States. It is the flagship university of the Colorado State University Syst ...

(2002 - 2004),

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

(2004 - 2006),

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

(2006–2010). In 2010, she returned to India to take up her present position at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in

Kolkata Kolkata, also known as Calcutta ( its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River, west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary ...

. Currently she is Consulting Editor of the

Journal of the History of Ideas The ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering intellectual history, conceptual history, and the history of ideas, including the histories of philosophy, literature and the arts, natural and soci ...

Publications

Deshpande has publications both in Marathi and English. Her book
Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700-1960 (2007)
explores modern history writing practices in Marathi-speaking parts of Western

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

and its impact on shaping Maharashtrian regional identity. Her other notable academic work include 'Scripting the Cultural History of Language: Modi in the Colonial Archive' and 'The writerly self: Literacy, discipline and codes of conduct in early modern western India (2016)'.
Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700-1960 (2007)

Shuddhalekhan Orthography, Community and the Marathi Public Sphere (2016)

The writerly self: Literacy, discipline and codes of conduct in early modern western India (2016)

Awards

In 2020, Deshpande received the

Infosys Prize The Infosys Prize is an annual award granted to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists of Indian origin (not necessarily born in India) by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards for researc ...

for Humanities – History for her extraordinarily nuanced and highly sophisticated treatment of South Asian

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiog ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Deshpande, Prachi 1972 births Living people 21st-century Indian historians Fergusson College alumni Jawaharlal Nehru University alumni Tufts University alumni Colorado State University faculty University of California, Berkeley faculty