Dr Aparajita Mukhopadhyay

Dr Aparajita Mukhopadhyay (FRHistS; FHEA) is a historian with research intersecting Imperial History and histories and technology and environment.

Dr Mukhopadhyay completed her PhD from SOAS, UK and was a Felix Scholar. Before joining Kent Dr Mukhopadhyay held academic appointments in the UK and USA.

Since 2021 Dr Mukhopadhyay is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Transport History, the leading peer-reviewed journal (Impact Factor 0.6) in the field of transport history.

Dr Mukhopadhyay is currently leading two AHRC funded research projects exploring how Indians mediated and adopted botanical knowledge and technologies in the 19th and 20th century South Asia as a way of providing new understanding of Imperial History through the lens of scientific knowledge production. 

Dr Mukhopadhyay has also appeared in TV and radio programmes. In 2025 she was invited to feature in Channel 4 programme Britain’s Railway Empire: In Colour.   

• Imperial Histories
• Histories of Technology
• History of Space and Mobilities
• Histories of Environment.     

• HIST4008/HIST4090: A Global History of Empire
• HIST5221: 'The Jewel in the Crown': India and the Making of Imperial Britain

Aparajita would be interested in supervising research projects in any of her areas of research (listed above).   

• PI (2024-28) AHRC Early Career Fellowships in Cultural and Heritage Institutions: Mediating Imperial Science: Economic Botany and Agrarian Ecology in Colonial South Asia  
• PI(2025-26): AHRC Impact Accelerator: Tracing Roots: Botany, Environment and Empire
• PI (2024-25): AHRC Impact Accelerator: Teaching Empire: Osborne House and Britain’s Global Pasts
• Co-I (2022-23): Co-I, Diffractive Knowledge Production in North-South Innovation Strategies: A Study of Major UK-India Bio Governance Research, British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant.