28/09/2026
Welcome, Swagatalakshmi!
Swagatalakshmi Saha from the Department of History at the University of Manchester is visiting LNUC Concurrences as a guest researcher during the fall semester, hosted by Eleonor Marcussen and based within the Colonial Connections and Comparisons research cluster. A recipient of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Scholarship from the government of UK, she is a final year doctoral candidate. Her doctoral thesis focusses on a connected history of time, temporality and time-keeping practices between Britain, Switzerland and India from the 1860s till the 1940s. She will be based at LNUC Concurrences from Sept 21-Oct 18, 2026.
Her project explores the histories of clockmaking in colonial India, and the ways in which colonial knowledge impacted local craftsmanship and occupational skills in Calcutta and Bombay. Her research investigates how artisanal communities of weavers, jewellery makers and metalworkers such as blacksmiths and goldsmiths adapted with incoming technologies of clock and watch manufacturing in 19th century India.
During her stay, Swagatalakshmi will work on a prospective journal article that examines the intersection of art, technology, and indigenous identity in the context of colonial India. The article will investigate, first, how colonial encounters with Indian clockmaking exposed the limitations of Western distinctions between art and technology and, second, how British educational reforms actively dismantled a long-standing artisanal epistemology rooted in the interdependence of artistic and technical knowledge. Through an examination of debates surrounding art instruction and the development of courses at Kala Bhavan, a native school of art in Baroda in the Bombay Presidency, her research will highlight the relationship between art, clock technology, and indigenous identity, while examining efforts to reclaim traditional craftsmanship within the colonial framework.
In addition to her research activities, Swagatalakshmi will present her work in a seminar organised jointly by the Cluster for Colonial Connections and Comparisons and the Global Humanities on 8 October 2026. She will also deliver a seminar for master’s students at the University on the ways in which global connections between European countries and South Asia facilitated new forms of knowledge production and exchange in the late nineteenth century.
