10 Questions with Feminist Academics

In this series we engage 10 feminist academics around 10 questions within and across their disciplines that are important for all to consider at this historical juncture. 

Bio

Dr Eleanor Newbigin is a historian of imperialism and decolonisation in twentieth-century South Asia. Her research explores how the end of formal colonial rule reshaped governance, citizenship, family, and political economy in India, drawing on feminist and gender studies methodologies alongside rigorous archival work.

She is the author of The Hindu Family and the Emergence of Modern India: Law, Citizenship and Community (Cambridge University Press, 2013), which examines how mid-twentieth-century reforms to Hindu family law reworked colonial hierarchies of gender, caste, and power in the postcolonial state. Her wider scholarship also addresses the history of economic thought in India and the colonial roots of contemporary ideas about wealth, poverty, and welfare.

Alongside her historical research, Newbigin develops creative and participatory approaches to engaging with imperial legacies, including collaborative theatre projects, public history workshops, and digital storytelling. Her current work examines how memories of the 1947 Partition are shaped within the UK diaspora, and how new technologies can enable critical re-engagements with colonial pasts.

Credits

Produced by: The Feminist Centre for Racial Justice

Host: Vasiliki Vita

Sound design, editing, production: Ellan A. Lincoln Hyde

Music: Grateful by audiolibraryinfinite from Pixabay