Rakesh Ankit studied history at Delhi, Oxford and Southampton, and taught at OP Jindal Global University (Sonipat, India), before joining Â鶹ֱ²¥ in 2018.
Rakesh’s previous research was on the evolution of the Kashmir conflict against the twin backdrops of Decolonisation and the Cold War, and on the Interim Governments in India, 1946-51. His next project looks at the nationalisation of commercial banks in India, 1969.
- Making and Unmaking of the Modern World Order
- From Rebellion to Partition: British India, 1857-1947
- After Empire: South Asia since 1945
Completed Postgraduate Research Students
- Franziska Karpinski: Between Depression and Zeal: Conceptions of Masculinity in the Wartime Letters of SS Hauptsturmführer Maximilian Guttenbrunner, 1939–1943)
Books
- India in the Interim: The 1947–1951 Nehru Government (CUP, 2024)
- (OUP, 2019)
- (Routledge, 2016)
Book Chapters
- ‘State before Partition: India’s Interim Government under Wavell’, in Stephen Legg, William Gould and Charu Gupta (eds.) Communal Geographies: Before and Beyond Partition in South Asia (London: Routledge, 2025),
- ‘British High-Commissioners in India and Pakistan and the Kashmir Conflict, 1947-49’, in Rogelia Pastor-Castro and Martin Thomas (eds.) Embassies in Crisis: Studies of Diplomatic Missions in Testing Situations (London: Routledge, 2020),
Recent Articles
- ‘Anarchism and the “Fascination with Empire”: George Woodcock in India, 1964–1985’, with Matthew S. Adams, International Review of Social History, 06 February 2026, pp. 1-28. DOI:
- 'Colonial legacies and the British geological survey in cold war South Asia: 1960s–1980s', Contemporary South Asia
- ‘De-linking ‘the two rupees’: Devaluation dilemma and economic divergence in the decolonised subcontinent, September 1949-February 1951’, Modern Asian Studies,
- ‘In Trust for the Three Nations? The India Office Library & Records Dispute, 1947-72’, Contemporary British History,