Dr. Pankaj Jha

Journal Publications

• 2023 – Jha, P. “Region, Politics and Literary Culture: Reflections from Mithila in the Long Fifteenth Century.” South Asian Studies, Vol. 39, No. 2 (2023). ISSN: 0266-6030.
• 2022 – Jha, P., & Sinha, N. “Tracing Historical Forms of Servitude: Introductory Remarks and Elementary Reflections.” South Asian History and Culture, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 433–444. ISSN: 1947-2501.
• 2022 – Jha, P., & Jha, S. “Gender Identities in Popular Hindi Films: From the 70s to the 90s.” Jūnī Khyāt, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 95–109. ISSN: 2278-4632.
• 2021 – Jha, P. “राजस्थानी व अन्य भारतीय साहित्य और आरंभिक आधुनिकता की कुछ झलकियाँ.” Rajasthan History Congress Proceedings, Vol. XXXV, pp. 830–835. ISSN: 2321-1288.
• 2021 – Jha, P. “साहित्य का सत्य बनाम इतिहास का तथ्य.” Jūnī Khyāt, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 222–232. ISSN: 2278-4632.
• 2021 – Roy, K., & Jha, P. “Whose History Is It Anyway?” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 56, No. 28, pp. 23–26. ISSN: 0012-9976.
• 2019 – Jha, P. “Sattā, Sāhitya aur Itihāsa: Madhyakālīn Pariprekshya Me.” Ālochanā, No. 62 (October–December 2019). ISSN: 2231-6329.
• 2019 – Jha, P. “Mithila, Hindi va Madhyakālīn Bhārat ke Itihās Me Vidyāpati.” Bayā, October–December 2019, pp. 6–17. ISSN: 2321-9858.
• 2016 – Jha, P. “Literary Conduits for ‘Consent’: Cultural Groundwork of the Mughal State in the Fifteenth Century.” The Medieval History Journal, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 322–350. ISSN: 0971-9458.
• 2016 – Jha, P. “Vidyapati: Itihāsakāroṃ kī Pratīkṣā Me.” Pratimān, Vol. 6, July–December 2016, pp. 220–239. ISSN: 2320-8201.
• 2014 – Jha, P. “Beyond the Local and the Universal: Exclusionary Strategies of Expansive Literary Cultures in Fifteenth-Century Mithila.” Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 51, No. 1, pp. 1–40. ISSN: 0019-4646.

Journal Special Issue

• 2022: Domestic Servants in North India: Analysing Courtly, Literary and Everyday Practices (Co-edited with Nitin Sinha), special issue of the journal, South Asian History and Culture, Vol. 13, No. 4., ISSN: 1947-2501

Books

• 2019: A Political History of Literature: Vidyapati and the Fifteenth Century, Delhi: Oxford University Press (ISBN: 978-0-19-948955-8)
• 2019: Servants’ Pasts: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century South Asia, vol. 1 (co-edited with Nitin Sinha & Nitin Varma), New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. (ISBN: 978-93-5287-664-8)

Chapters in Edited Books

• 2026 – Kumar, S., & Jha, P. “Rulers, Subordinates, Literati, Slaves: Institutional Precedents and Legacies of the Sultanate of Delhi.” In Richard M. Eaton and Ramya Sreenivasan (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Mughal World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. forthcoming. Online ISBN: 9780190222659; Print ISBN: 9780190222642.
• 2022 – Jha, P. “Preparing for the Mughal State: A View from the Textual Worlds of the Fifteenth Century.” In Hermann Kulke and Bhairabi Prasad Sahu (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of State in Premodern India. Oxon and New York: Routledge, pp. 439–457. ISBN: 978-1-032-33225-3.
• 2022 – Jha, P. “Unit 2: Sanskrit Kāvya Literature, Regional Sources and Travelogues.” In IGNOU Reading Materials, BHIC-112 (History of India–VII, c. 1605–1750), pp. 23–40. ISBN: 978-93-5568-251-2.
• 2019 – Jha, P. “Securing the Naukar: Caste and Domestics in Fifteenth-Century Mithila.” In Nitin Sinha, Nitin Varma, and Pankaj Jha (eds.), Servants’ Pasts: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century South Asia, Vol. 1, pp. 133–152. ISBN: 978-93-5287-664-8.
• 2019 – Sinha, N., Varma, N., & Jha, P. “Introduction.” In Servants’ Pasts: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century South Asia, Vol. 1, pp. 1–88. ISBN: 978-93-5287-664-8.
• 2013 – Jha, P. “Gender, Varṇa and Vidyapati.” NMML Occasional Paper, History and Society: New Series, No. 32. New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, pp. 1–34. ISSN: 81-87614-90-0.
• 2008 – Jha, P. “A Table Laden with Good Things: Reading a Fourteenth-Century Sufi Text.” In Abhijit Gupta and Swapan Chakravorty (eds.), Moveable Type: Book History in India. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, pp. 3–25. ISBN: 81-7824-217-6.
• 2006 – Jha, P. “Itihās Darshan (Philosophy of History).” In Shyam Singh Shashi (ed.), Sāmājik Vijñān ka Hindi Vishvakoṣ (Encyclopaedia of Social Science in Hindi). Delhi: Suryaprabha Prakashan, pp. 43–47. ISBN: 978-938014-6713.
• 2005 – Jha, P. “Caste and Society,” “Religion,” and the Medieval Section of the “Timechart.” In The Timechart History of India. Bath: Robert Frederick. ISBN: 0755451627.
• 2004 – Jha, P. “Maneri’s Malfuz: Writing Orality and Devising ‘Public’ Space in a Fourteenth-Century Muslim Settlement of Bihar.” In M. D. Muthukumaraswamy and Molly Kaushal (eds.), Folklore, Public Sphere and Civil Society. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) and National Folklore Support Centre (NFSC), pp. 92–102. ISBN: 8190148141.

Translation

• 2007: “Peasants, Landlords and the State: Agrarian Society and the Mughal Empire” from English to Hindi, ‘Kisan Zamindar aur Rajya: Krishi Samaj aur Mughal Samrajya” for Class XII History Textbook, Themes in Indian History (Bharatiya Itihas ke Kuchh Vishaya), Part II, Delhi: NCERT, pp. 196-223. [ISBN: 81-7450-759-0]

Select Book Reviews

• 2018 – Jha, P. “Vernacular Languages as Vehicles of Literary Expression.” The Book Review, Vol. 42, No. 12. ISSN: 0970-4175.
• 2018 – Jha, P. “Siddhanton ka Apaghāt.” Review of Sudhish Pachauri, Sexuality ka Samaroh (Delhi: Vani Prakashan, 2017). Hans, July 2018. ISSN: 2454-4450.
• 2018 – Jha, P. “Mobility, Martiality and Memory of the Thar.” Review of Tanuja Kothiyal, Nomadic Narratives: A History of Mobility and Identity in the Great Indian Desert (Delhi: Cambridge University Press). Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 53, No. 5. ISSN: 0012-9976.
• 2013 – Jha, P. Review Essay of Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500–1800; Allison Busch, Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India; and Rosalind O’Hanlon and David Washbrook (eds.), Religious Cultures in Early Modern India: New Perspectives. The Medieval History Journal, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 221–232. ISSN: 0971-9458.
• 2012 – Jha, P. “Rīti Sāhitya aur Sāṃskṛtik Patan kā Mithak.” Review (in Hindi) of Allison Busch, Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Nayapath, July–December, pp. 137–140.
• 2005 – Jha, P. Review of Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political Islam in India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003). Biblio, Vol. 10, Nos. 5–6.
• 2001 – Jha, P. Review of Irfan Habib (ed.), Confronting Colonialism: Resistance and Modernisation under Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan. Indian Review of Books, Vol. 10.
• 2001 – Jha, P. Review of D. N. Jha (ed.), The Feudal Order: State, Society and Ideology in Early Medieval India. The Book Review, Vol. 25, No. 4. ISSN: 0970-4175.
• 2000 – Jha, P. Review of Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556–1707. Indian Review of Books, Vol. 9, No. 10.

Paper Presentations in Seminars/ Conferences

• 2022 – Conference on Courts of North India and the Deccan, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA, 15–16 April. Presented a paper entitled “What Consists in a Region? Notes from Early Modern North Indian Literatures.”
• 2020 – International Workshop on Literature, Narratives, History, Department of History, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 26 February. Presented a paper entitled “Locating Texts within Multilingual Contexts: Literature as a Field of Politics.”
• 2019 – National Seminar on Kabir and Bhakti Movement, Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College, Delhi, India, 19 September. Delivered a lecture entitled “Becoming Kabir: History, Politics and the Emancipatory Idiom of Bondage in the Fifteenth Century.”
• 2019 – Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin, Germany, 5 July. Presented a paper entitled “The Literary World of a Medieval ‘Muslim’: Culture, Politics and Historiography of Medieval India.”
• 2018 – Conference on Command and Consent, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Bonn, Germany, 7–11 November. Presented a paper entitled “Consent and Conflict as Constitutive Elements of Power in Fifteenth-Century North India.”
• 2018 – 2nd International Conference on Servants’ Pasts, Leibniz-ZMO and Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, 11–13 April. Presented a paper entitled “Problems and Promises of Writing Servants’ Pasts in Premodern South Asia.”
• 2018 – National Conference on Debating the Early Modern in South Asian History, Ashoka University, Sonipat, India, 9–10 February. Presented a paper entitled “North Indian Early Modernity as a Porous Time Frame: Language, Literature and History in the Irregular Fifteenth Century.”
• 2017 – National Conference on Crossing Boundaries, Department of History, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 27–28 February. Presented a paper entitled “Society before State: Language, Literature and Power in (Pre-)Mughal Times.”
• 2017 – Workshop on Time Frames: Questioning Chronologies in South Asia’s Pasts, Shiv Nadar University, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, India, 24–25 February. Presented a paper entitled “Beyond Universal Keys and Unmoving Chronologies: Fifteenth Century and Other Missing Links in ‘Indian’ History.”
• 2016 – 22nd Refresher Course in History, UGC Human Resource Development Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India, 24 August. Presented a paper entitled “Languages and Literatures in Medieval India.”
• 2016 – European Conference for South Asian Studies, Warsaw, Poland, 27–30 July. Presented a paper entitled “Securing the Naukar: Caste, Gender and the ‘Domestic’ in Fifteenth-Century Mithila.”
• 2016 – International Summer School for Graduate Students, Centre for Escalation of Peace, New Delhi, India, 14 July. Presented a paper entitled “The Language Question: A History of Purity and Infidelity in Medieval India.”
• 2015 – Seminar on Literary Cultures and History in South Asia, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India, 11–12 March. Presented a paper entitled “Literary Cultures in Sanskrit, Persian and Vernacular Compositions in Fifteenth-Century North India.”
• 2015 – Presented a paper entitled “Gathering Idioms of Authority in the Liminal Time-Space: A View from Fifteenth-Century Mithila.” (Conference details not specified.)
• 2012 – International Workshop on Philologies across Asias, Transregionale Studien (Berlin) and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi, India, November–December. Presented a paper entitled “Reading Vidyapati: Sanskrit in the Fifteenth Century.”
• 2012 – History Seminar, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, New Delhi, India, 24 July. Presented a paper entitled “Articulating Power in Fifteenth-Century Mithila: Conceptions of Gender, Caste and Politics in Vidyapati.”
• 2011 – Conference on What’s New: The Changing Face of Indian Cinema, University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, 8–9 July. Presented a paper entitled “Gender Identities in Popular Hindi Films, 70s to 90s.”
• 2011 – Workshop on Teaching Gender: Problems and Prospects in Different Disciplines, Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 10 June. Presented a paper entitled “Teaching Gender: Reporting from an Undergraduate History Class.”
• 2011 – Conference on The Politics of Identity in South Asia, Department of History and Culture, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India, 21–22 March. Presented a paper entitled “Framing the Feminine: Gender Identities in Popular Hindi Films, 1970s–1990s.”
• 2008 – Conference on Religion in Indian History: Ideas, Practice and Change, Department of History and Culture, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India, 29 February–1 March. Presented a paper entitled “Texts, Narratives and Identities in Brahmanic Discourse in Early Fifteenth-Century North Bihar.”
• 2005 – Conference on The Material and the Imaginary, organized by Francesca Orsini, Italian Embassy Cultural Centre, New Delhi, India, 14 March. Co-presented (with Sunil Kumar) a paper entitled “Remapping the North Indian World of Thirteenth- and Early Fourteenth-Century Persian Literary Production.”
• 2003 – Symposium on Religion, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and India International Centre, New Delhi, India, 18–21 December. Presented a paper entitled “Sufis and Sultans: A Critique of Notions of Religion in Sultanate Historiography.”

Invited Talks/Lectures/Workshops 

• 2026 – Rethinking Indian Knowledge Systems Lectures, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi, India, 19 June. Delivered a lecture entitled “Whither Indian Knowledge System.”
• 2026 – Book Discussion on Against the Fetishisation of Plural Time, Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi, India, 25 March. Served as a discussant in conversation with the author, Prof. Nitin Sinha.
• 2026 – Kaalchakra: Annual Academic Fest, Department of History, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 24 February. Delivered an invited lecture entitled “Cultures of Servitude in North Indian History.”
• 2026 – Three-Day Workshop for College Teachers, Department of History, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 19 February. Served as Resource Person for a session entitled “Sources and the Practice of History III.”
• 2026 – Ambedkar University Delhi, Delhi, India, 11 February. Delivered an invited lecture entitled “Political Ethics and Ideals of a Man in Fifteenth-Century Sanskrit Literature.”
• 2025 – Jaigarh Heritage Festival, Jaipur, India, 7 December. Participated as a panelist in the session “Rajasthan & the Subcontinent: Politics, Polity and the Art of War.”
• 2025 – Faculty Development Programme, Goa University, Goa, India, 29 November. Delivered a lecture entitled “De-colonising History and Other Knowledge Formations.”
• 2025 – Faculty Development Programme, Goa University, Goa, India, 29 November. Delivered a lecture entitled “How Important Is It for Historians to Be Philologically Minded?”
• 2025 – Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory and School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, 27 September. Delivered a presentation entitled “Travails of a Discipline: History from the Curriculum to the Classroom.”
• 2025 – ARSD College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 20 August. Delivered a keynote lecture entitled “विद्यापति साहित्य के विविध आयाम (Diverse Aspects of Vidyapati’s Oeuvre).”
• 2024 – International Conference on “Translations/Transitions: Sultanate to Mughal 16th Century”, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, 7 April. Presented a paper entitled “Talking across Literary Cultures: Historians Caught in a Philological Conundrum.”
• 2024 – Department of History, Ramjas College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 5 March. Delivered a lecture entitled “History of Languages and Multilingualism in Medieval India.”
• 2023 – Annual History Fest, Department of History, Gargi College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 31 March. Delivered a presentation entitled “Decoding Pleasure: Aesthetic Sensibilities and Social Traditions.”
• 2023 – Colloquium on Education and Exclusion: Knowledge and Pedagogical Practices, Department of History, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 21 March. Participated as a member of the expert panel.
• 2022 – Department of History, Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana, India, 16 November. Delivered an invited lecture entitled “History of Languages and Languages of History in ‘Medieval’ North India.”
• 2022 – Graduate Student Colloquium on Historical Methods, Department of History & Archaeology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar Institute of Eminence, 18–19 October. Participated as an expert discussant.
• 2022 – 4th Inter-University Historians’ Colloquium, O.P. Jindal Global University, India International Centre, New Delhi, India, 9–10 September. Served as Resource Person in the roundtable discussion “Teaching History in India @75.”
• 2022 – Workshop on A Social History of Time in South Asia, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin, Germany, 18–22 July. Served as Resource Person.
• 2021 – Ambedkar University Delhi, Delhi, India, 24 September. Participated as a panelist in a discussion on The Loss of Hindustan by Manan Ahmed Asif.
• 2021 – The Historian’s Craft Lecture Series, Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 16 March. Delivered an invited lecture entitled “Texts, Sources and Modern Historiographies of Medieval India.”
• 2019 – English Literary Society, Miranda House, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 6 February. Participated as a resource person in a panel discussion on Padmaavat.
• 2017 – International Conference on Servants’ Pasts, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi, India, organized by the European Research Council, 16–18 February. Chaired a session entitled “Mughal Households.”
• 2017 – Student Workshop for Research Paper Writing, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 10–21 January. Delivered a lecture entitled “Choosing a Topic and Framing Research Questions.”
• 2014 – Workshop on Command to Consent: The Structure and Representation of Power in the Late-Medieval Eurasian World, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, 5 November. Participated in the workshop.
• 2013 – History Society, Jamshedpur Women’s College, Ranchi University, Jamshedpur, India, 18 April. Delivered a talk entitled “History, Literature, and Post-modernism.”
• 2004 – History Society, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 26 August. Delivered a talk entitled “Shortcuts to Secularism: The Two Histories of the Sultanate Period.”
• 2003 – Workshop for School Teachers of History, North Delhi University Teachers for School Education, Delhi, India, 22 February. Delivered a talk entitled “History, Memory and Collective Identities.”
• 2002 – History Society, Janaki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 5 February. Delivered a lecture entitled “Turkish Conquest of North India: Nature, Significance and Problematic.”

Editorial Work

• 2021 – Continued: Managing Editor of The Indian Economic and Social History Review, a Scopus Indexed journal published by Sage India.
• 2017 – 2020. Member, Editorial Board, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, a Scopus Indexed journal published by Sage India.

Honorary Positions

• 2021-26: Member, Advisory Board, for the European Research Council sponsored project on Timely Histories: A Social History of Time in South Asia, hosted by Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin.
• 2014-15: Member, Book Selection Committee, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti Bhavan, New Delhi.

Awards and Fellowships

• 2019: Month long post-doctoral research fellowship at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin
• 2016: Awarded a bursary of Rs. 52,000 (3000 Polish Zloty) from European Research Council to travel to Warsaw, Poland to present a paper in the European Conference for South Asian Studies
• 2013-2014: Fulbright Fellowship for Doctoral Work in University of Texas at Austin, USA
• 1993-1995: Junior Research Fellow, University Grants Commission.

Articles in Popular Media and Newspapers/Magazines

• 2021 ‘Controversies surrounding curricular changes in higher education is not about Left versus Right’, in Newsnine, 8 September
• 2020 ‘How could Mughals be our heroes’, in The Quint, 21 September.
• 2017: ‘History Vs cultural memory? Rajputs also collaborated with British’, Indian Express, 26 November.
• 2017: ‘The battle over Padmavati is pointless, but a win-¬win for all its participants’, The Print, 17 November.
• 2017: ‘A saffron shadow over the yellow valley’, Newslaundry, 3 August.
• 2013: ‘Faulty Foundations’, Outlook Magazine, 30th May, 2013.
• 2013: ‘Khokhalî Buniyaad ke Paath’, in Jansattaa, 24th May, 2013.
• 2011: ‘Costly Haste: on Semesterisation of Delhi University Undergraduate Courses’, in Frontline, Vol. 28, issue 14, pp. 25-28. 2nd July -15th July, 2011. (ISSN : 0970-1710).
• 2007: ‘Obscured by Myth: Conversion or the Art of Asking the Wrong Question’, in The Times of India (editorial), 10th January