Biography

Saeed Ahmad is a historian of postcolonial and contemporary India, and Assistant Professor at the Jindal School of Art and Architecture, O.P. Jindal Global University, Haryana, India. His work examines the material and social production of Delhi through questions of migration, infrastructure, conflict, and memory. Saeed received his PhD from the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), University of Goettingen, prior to which he was based at the Department of History, University of Delhi. 

As part of various research projects, Saeed has examined newspapers and reading publics in Delhi, oral histories of journalists during the Indian Emergency; prominent government officials and diplomats in India’s postcolonial period; private and institutional collections; and legislative debates on the Abducted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Act of 1949. 

Saeed is currently preparing a book manuscript based on Delhi's long twentieth century through a contemporary neighbourhood micro-history. His study of the Jangpura-Bhogal neighourhood area from c. 1922-2022, focusses on the shifting caste, class, spatial, and religious conjunctions that affect state legibility, civic, and political access to craft space, community, and belonging in the neighbourhood and the city. He is also part of a new collaborative transdisciplinary British Academy funded project that addresses questions of sacred urbanism, heritage and diaspora worlding.