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

History History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

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) is a public major research university located in New Delhi, India. It was established in 1969 and named after Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister. The university is known for leading faculties and r ...

respectively before moving to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

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 land-grant research university in Fort Collins, Colorado. It is the flagship university of the Colorado State University System. Colorado State University is classified among "R1: ...

(2002 - 2004),

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

(2004 - 2006),

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

(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 (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

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 (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

and its impact on shaping

Maharashtrian Maharashtrian is an adjective referring to something related to: * Maharashtra, a state of India * Marathi people * Marathi language See also * Maharashtrian Brahmin * Maharashtri, the medieval language * Marathi (disambiguation) Marathi may ...

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

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...

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