Christopher Shackle, (born 4 March 1942) is Emeritus Professor of Modern Languages of South Asia at the
University of London.
Life and career
Christopher Shackle was born on 4 March 1942. He was educated at
Haileybury and Imperial Service College, and went up to
Merton College, Oxford
Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is one of the Colleges of Oxford University, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the ...
in 1959 to read Oriental Studies, graduating with a first class degree in 1963. He then went on to study as a postgraduate at
St Antony's College.
In 1969 Shackle took up an appointment as a Lecturer in Urdu and Panjabi at
SOAS University of London, a position he held for the next 10 years. In January 1979 he moved to
Birkbeck College
Birkbeck, University of London (formally Birkbeck College, University of London), is a public university, public research university, located in Bloomsbury, London, England, and a constituent college, member institution of the federal Universit ...
to become Reader in Modern Languages of South Asia, returning in 1985 to SOAS as Professor of Modern Languages of South Asia.
He is furthermore the head of the
Urdu department at the
School of Oriental and African Studies of
London, Project Leader at the
Arts and Humanities Research Council's Centre for Asian and African Literatures, and a member of the Centre of South Asian Studies.
Shackle is an expert in the
Saraiki language, which he learned from
Mehr Abdul Haq. He has written several books on Saraiki literature and
Khwaja Ghulam Farid. He was active in Saraiki writers' circle and a friend of Umer Kamal Khan and
Aslam Rasoolpuri Aslam is a male given name and surname used in the Muslim world. It is also a surname of English origin, and has two possible sources, the first being from a topographical name for someone who lived by