Dr Vikram Visana

I joined the School of History, Politics and International Relations as a Lecturer in Political Theory in 2022.

My major research to date has focused on Indian liberalism with my first book, Uncivil Liberalism: Labour, Capital and Commercial Society in Dadabhai Naoroji's Political Thought (2022) exploring the contribution of radical Indian liberalism to global ideas of labour republicanism, sociality and political economy.

I have since worked on the political thought of the founder of Hindu nationalism, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and the populist register of Hindutva.

I am currently researching and writing on:

• Indian conservatism, democratic elites and civilisational politics
• How anti-colonial political thought and Indian labour republicanism might inform our approach to frontier models and AI. 
• A moral philosophy piece on the distinctive wrong of 'caste' above and beyond existing accounts of exploitation, domination, and relative equality. 

A larger research project is investigating caste as a global category and how it should shape our social justice claims. 

• Indian Political Thought, c. 1750 to present
• Anti-colonial and postcolonial thought
• Liberalism, Populism, and Republicanism in the Global South
• Hindu Nationalism/Hindutva
• The Political Theory of Race and Caste

Books

Uncivil Liberalism: Labour, Capital and Commercial Society in Dadabhai Naoroji’s Political Thought, Cambridge University Press, 2022 (Finalist for the Royal Historical Society's Gladstone Prize 2023).  

Journal Articles

'Glory and Humiliation in the Making of V. D. Savarkar’s Hindu Nationalism’, The Historical Journal  66,1 (2022), pp. 165-185. 

'Savarkar before Hindutva: Sovereignty, Republicanism, and Populism in India. c.1900-1920', Modern Intellectual History 18, 4 (2021), pp. 1106-1129. 

'Beyond Citizen and Subject: New Perspectives on British Political Thought and Indirect Rule in Africa’, History Compass 17, 3 (2019), pp. 1-13. 

'Vernacular Liberalism, Capitalism, and Anti-Imperialism in the Political Thought of Dadabhai Naoroji’, The Historical Journal 59, 3 (2016), pp. 775-797. 

Chapters

'Race and Caste in Modern Indian Political Thought', in Sarah Dunstan and Ian Stewart eds., Race and The Modern World: An Intellectual History (Cambridge University Press, 2026). 

with Prof. Nadia Urbinati, ‘Beyond the Polis: Transforming Sovereignty’ in Eugenio Biagini and Gary Gerstle eds., A Cultural History of Democracy Vol. 6: A Cultural History of Democracy in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury, 2021). 

‘Decolonizing Capital: Indian Political Economy in the Shadow of Empire’, in Maureen Ruprecht Fadem and Michael O’Sullivan eds., Economics after Empire: Genealogies of Capital and the Colonial Encounter (Routledge, 2020).

Prospective PhD students may request supervision in the following or related areas:

• Indian Political Thought, c. 1750 to present
• Anti-colonial and postcolonial thought
• Liberalism, Populism, and Republicanism in the Global South
• Hindu Nationalism/Hindutva
• The Political Theory of Race and Caste

PGR students are working or have worked on:

• Political socialisation and Hindu nationalism (primary-supervisor PhD)
• Black British history, archiving, and memory (second-supervisor PhD)
• Islamic Political Thought in Pakistan (supervisor MRes Dissertation)

Undergraduate

I currently convene and teach on the first-year core politics module: PL1019: Introduction to Politics.

I also teach on the first-year module PL1011: Political Concepts and the second-year module PL2011: Political Ideas. 

Finally, I convene and teach my research-based final-year module PL3153: Race, Caste and Political Theory

Postgraduate

I contribute seminars on Indian international relations to the MA module "International Relations after the Cold War". On the history side of the School, I also contribute seminars on "global intellectual history" to the MA module on Global History.

I am happy to discuss topics relating to South Asian and British-Asian topics as well as racism, populism, and far-right politics more broadly. Please contact [email protected] to get in touch.

Previously, I have been interviewed for BBC News East Midlands, BBC Politics East Midlands, as well as German, Australian, and Canadian broadcasters.

I have also appeared on BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking to discuss Hindu nationalism the politics of postcolonial architecture. 

Gandhi and Indian Architecture

Hindu Nationalism and Populism

• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
• Peer-Review Panel for the Arts & Humanities Research Council
• Editorial Board, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
• Editorial Board, Intellectual History Review
• Member, Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought
• Member, British Association of South Asian Studies

• BA (Hons) History
• MSc Theory and History of International Relations
• PhD History of Political Thought
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy