Dr Kiran Mehta

I am a historian of Britain and the British Empire in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My particular focus is on coerced labour, criminal law and punishment, especially incarceration. I received my B.A. from Cornell University (Ithaca, New York), and my MPhil and DPhil from the University of Oxford (UK). Before coming to Leicester, I was a Lecturer in History at Worcester College, Oxford. I was also a Lecturer in History at King's College London. I was a visiting research fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Legal History and Legal Theory in 2023-4. 

I recently published my first monograph, To Detain or To Punish: Magistrates and the Making of the London Prison System, 1750-1840, with McGill-Queen's University Press (March 2025). Find full details here: https://www.mqup.ca/to-detain-or-to-punish-products-9780228024088.php

My new, Leverhulme-funded project is entitled Making Useful Subjects: Penal Labour in Britain and its Empire (1770-1895). It offers a critical new perspective on the negotiation of citizenship and subjecthood in nineteenth-century Britain and its Empire by exploring political incorporation through the lens of penal labour. Focusing on three key sites (England, Australia and Trinidad), it probes the intersections between the ‘civilising’ mission of penal labour and the ‘civilising’ mission of empire. More particularly, it looks at the motivations and aims that drove British authorities to set prisoners and convicts to work; the contours of penal labour; and the effects of penal labour. The research takes a comprehensive view of penal labour, bringing prisons, penal colonies, and penal settlements, across Britain and Empire, into the same frame. In so doing, it offers the first in-depth comparative exploration of penal labour in Britain and its Empire.

To Detain or To Punish: Magistrates and the Making of the London Prisons System (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2025)

Book Event, To Detain or To Punish, North American Conference on British Studies, 24 September 2025, in conversation with Professor Simon Devereaux : https://www.nacbs.org/event-details/to-detain-or-punish-with-kiran-mehta

Lecture, The London Archives, on my recent book, To Detain or To Punish, 3 September 2025: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/to-detain-or-to-punish-tickets-1380627657489?aff=oddtdtcreator