Research Student

Sophie is a PhD student at the OU and started her research in October 2017.

Research Interests

The provisional title of her thesis is 'Anglo-Indian Ink: Tracing the Literature of a Forgotten Community'. The study will explore how ‘mixed-race’ Anglo-Indian people have been represented in literature and the ways in which this may have been influenced by key events in South Asian history, such as the Indian Uprising (1857), Indian Independence (1947), and the post-independence diaspora of this community. Texts by writers such as Rudyard Kipling, John Masters and Allan Sealy, will be compared with writing by less well-known (often female) writers such as Flora Annie Steel, Maud Diver, Rumer Godden and Manorama Mathai. The study will also examine the phenomenal outpouring of writing from the community itself since 2000, and the ways in which Anglo-Indian people have begun to represent themselves and fashion their own identities.