Home

PhD in History, 2022; Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

MA in Social Anthropology, 2013; School of Oriental and African Studies

MA in English (Cultural Studies), 2009; English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad

Dr. Ritam Sengupta

Assistant Professor

Email ritam.sengupta@jgu.edu.in
Connect with me

PhD in History, 2022; Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

MA in Social Anthropology, 2013; School of Oriental and African Studies

MA in English (Cultural Studies), 2009; English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad

Biography

Ritam Sengupta specializes in the study of infrastructure, energy, the environment and media through the lens of history and anthropology. He completed his PhD in History from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. His PhD thesis that he is developing now as a book project focuses on the ways in which colonial and postcolonial rule impacted the development of electricity in Indian cities over the late 19th and 20th centuries. He is engaged in a second research project on the history of seasonality, agrarian technology and commercialized agriculture in colonial and postcolonial North India. This project was conceived as part of a Post-Doctoral Fellowship awarded by the European Research Council and held at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient between 2022-2023. He has also held fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and the Linda Hall Library.

[Peer Reviewed] Sengupta, Ritam. “Keeping the master cool, every day, all day: Punkah-pulling in colonial India”, vol. 59.1, pgs. 37-73, January, 2022. Indian Economic and Social History Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/00194646211064592

[Peer Reviewed (Co-Edited)] Jha Manish and Ritam Sengupta. Data Centres as Infrastructure: Frontiers of digital governance in contemporary India, Orient Blackswan, 2022. https://orientblackswan.com/details?id=9789354422652

[Peer Reviewed (Co-Authored)] Sengupta, Ritam and Manish Jha. “Introduction: The state in/of Data Centres in India” in Data Centres as Infrastructure: Frontiers of digital governance in contemporary India’, eds. Manish Jha and Ritam Sengupta, Orient Blackswan, 2022, pp. 1-38.

[Peer Reviewed] Sengupta, Ritam. “Between control and ‘feedback’: Narrating the digitised operations of a ‘captive’ Electricity Data Centre in West Bengal, India”, in Data Centres as Infrastructure: Frontiers of digital governance in contemporary India’, eds. Manish Jha and Ritam Sengupta, Orient Blackswan, 2022, pp. 88-127.

Book Reviews: Sengupta, Ritam. Review of Sarkar, Suvobrata: Let there be light: Engineering, Entrepreneurship and Electricity in Colonial Bengal, 1880-1945. Cambridge University Press. 2020, in: H-Soz-Kult, April 12, 2022. https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-96862

[Peer Reviewed (Co-Authored)] – Heeks, Richard, Vanya Rakesh, Ritam Sengupta, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, and Christopher Foster. “Datafication, Value and Power in Developing Countries: Big Data in Two Indian Public Service Organisations”, vol. 39, pgs. 1-25, October, 2019, Development Policy Review. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/dpr.12477

[Peer Reviewed] – Sengupta, Ritam. “The Small Town in India: ‘Subaltern Urbanisation’ and beyond”, vol. 50, pgs. 58-79, 2017, Refugee Watch: A South Asian Journal on Forced Migration.

http://www.mcrg.ac.in/rw%20files/RW50/RW50.pdf

[Co-authored] – Sengupta, Ritam, Richard Heeks, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, and Christopher Foster. “Exploring big data for development: An electricity sector case study from India”, Development Informatics Working Paper 66 (2017). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3431737

Sengupta, Ritam. “Concepts in Logistics” (in Bengali). In Logistical Worlds: Infrastructure, Software, Labour – No. 2, Kolkata, Eds. Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter, pp. 101-110 (Open Humanities Press, London, 2017. – http://openhumanitiespress.org/books/download/Neilson-Rossiter_2017_Logistical-Worlds-Kolkata.pdf)
Email ritam.sengupta@jgu.edu.in
Apply Now