Maria Misra

Misra is half-Indian, coming from a family of Brahmins, and spent many of her childhood holidays visiting relatives there.{{cite web |title=Maria Misra on her life, India and Vishnu's Crowded Temple |url=https://blackwells.co.uk/jsp/editorial/browse/Culture/Articles/misra.jsp |website=Blackwell's |access-date=6 March 2025}}

Misra matriculated as a student of Christ Church, Oxford in 1982, originally reading English before changing to Philosophy, Politics and Economics.{{cite web |title=Dr Maria Misra (Christ Church, 1982) |url=https://www.alumni.ox.ac.uk/quad/quadcast/dr-maria-misra |website=Oxford Alumni |access-date=13 May 2024}}

Misra's doctoral thesis examined relations between British and Indian businessmen during the colonial period and was supervised by Tapan Raychaudhuri and Tom Tomlinson.{{cite book |last1=Misra |first1=Maria |title=Business, Race, and Politics in British India, c.1850-1960 |date=1999 |publisher=Clarendon Press |location=Oxford |isbn=0191542687 |page=vii}}

Misra joined Keble College as Associate Professor of Modern History in 1996. She had previously taught at the University of Birmingham and Coventry Polytechnic. She was awarded a Title of Distinction as Professor of Global History by the University of Oxford in November 2020.{{cite journal |title=Recognition of Distinction 2020 |journal=Oxford University Gazette |date=12 November 2020 |volume=151 |issue=5293 |page=6 |url=https://gazette.web.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/gazette/documents/media/12_november_2020_-_no_5293_redacted.pdf |accessdate=16 November 2020 |publisher=University of Oxford }}

She has written two books on Indian history: Business, Race and Politics in British India and Vishnu's Crowded Temple, India since the Great Rebellion. The latter, published by Allen Lane to be timed with India's 60 years of independence, addresses the question of how India's traditions of caste and religious identities are able to coexist with a modern democratic state on its way to becoming a major economic power.

She has presented a television documentary series on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century India which was broadcast in 2001, has written for the New Statesman, The Guardian, The Times and The Financial Times and has contributed to the Saturday Review on BBC Radio 4. She is a columnist for the Times Higher Education Supplement.{{Cite web |url=http://www.thes.co.uk/search/search_results.aspx?search=misra&mode=archive&searchYear=&searchMonth=&x=32&y=3 |title=Misra's articles in the THES |access-date=2007-03-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927221633/http://www.thes.co.uk/search/search_results.aspx?search=misra&mode=archive&searchYear=&searchMonth=&x=32&y=3 |archive-date=2007-09-27 |url-status=dead }} Misra has appeared as an expert commentator in three episodes of the Radio 4 discussion series In Our Time: Imperial science (2001),{{cite web |title=In Our Time, Imperial Science |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00547b5 |website=BBC Radio 4 |access-date=23 June 2025}} the British Empire (2001){{cite web |title=In Our Time, The British Empire |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00547kp |website=BBC Radio 4 |access-date=23 June 2025}} and the East India Company (2003).{{cite web |title=In Our Time, The East India Company |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0054906 |website=BBC Radio 4 |access-date=23 June 2025}}

• "Politics and Expatriate Enterprise in India: The Inter-War Years" in Business and Politics in India: A Historical Perspective (ed. D.Tripathi), (New Delhi, 1991)
• Business, Race and Politics in British India c.1860-1960. (Oxford, 1999) 250pp.
• "Gentlemanly Capitalism and the Raj: British Policy in India, c. 1860-1947" in Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: The New Debate of Empire (ed. R.E. Dumett), (Basingstoke, 1999) pp 157–174
• "Business Culture and Entrepreneurship in British India, 1860-1950", Modern Asian Studies 34:2 (2000) pp 333–348

• [http://www.channel4.com/community/showcards/I/Indian_Affair_-_Maria_Misra.html Interview] at Channel 4
• {{IMDb name|id=nm2823938}}

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