Shubhanga Pandey

I’m a writer, editor and a PhD candidate in History at the University of California, Los Angeles. My research looks at histories of information, ideas and political order. I am interested in how and why different historical actors pursue activities like surveying, data collecting, reporting, mapping, archiving, compiling and chronicling. The actors I usually come across are rulers, diplomats, soldiers, bureaucrats, scribes, merchants, spies, the literati, and postal runners, among others. My area of focus is South Asia, in particular the states and societies that inhabited the Himalaya and the adjoining plains during the 18th and 19th centuries.

My dissertation takes this approach to write a forgotten history of diplomacy, statecraft and political thought in Asia between the decline of early-modern empires and rise of European colonial states.

Before graduate school, I was the Chief Editor of Himal Southasian, a magazine of politics and culture from South Asia. I have written on Nepal’s Gen Z uprising, crossborder Hindu nationalist politics, Delhi–Kathmandu diplomatic tensions, and the Sri Lankan financial crises, for publications including the London Review of Books, New Left Review, Jacobin, and The Caravan.

I also write Daftar, a newsletter on history, politics, and the present.