Gunnel Cederlöf

Cederlöf studied history at Uppsala University where she obtained a BA in 1990 and a PhD in 1997. Her doctoral thesis examined bonded labour, caste and class relations in South India’s agrarian economy in the 20th century.

Cederlöf was appointed to Professor at Uppsala University in 2011, where she also served as Director of the Forum for Advanced Studies in Arts, Languages, and Theology (2006-08). She taught in the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology (2014-17). She currently serves as Professor of History in the Centre for Concurrencies in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at Linnaeus University and as Visiting Professor in the School of Humanities at Shiv Nadar University.

Cederlöf has been a visiting researcher at SCAS, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies (2000), Oxford University (2000-01), Jawaharlal Nehru University (2010), and Calcutta University (2004-13).

In 2017, she was appointed to Working Member of The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in the historical-antiquarian class.

Cederlöf’s research is situated in environmental history, legal history, and colonial history. Her research focuses on early-modern and modern India and the British Empire. Her recent research ‘seeks to establish the impact of environment, climate, and mobility on the formative processes of subjecthood and of British colonial governing institutions on the North-eastern Frontiers.’

She is a known advocate for the internationalization of Swedish higher-education and academia. She was awarded Uppsala University’s Pedagogical Prize in 2010 ‘For the interationalization of education’. She currently serves as Deputy Chair of The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT).

• Cederlöf, G. and S. Das Gupta (eds.). 2017. Subjects, Citizens and Law: Colonial and Independent India. Routledge, New Delhi and London.
• Cederlöf, G. 2014. Founding and Empire on India’s North-Eastern Frontiers, 1790-1840: Climate, Commerce, Polity. Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
• Cederlöf G. 2008. Landscapes and the Law: Environmental Politics, Regional Histories, and Contests over Nature. Permanent Black, New Delhi.
• Cederlöf, G. and K. Sivaramakrishnan (eds.). 2005. Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods and Identities in South Asia. Permanent Black, New Delhi. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2006. Second edition: Permanent Black, 2012. University of Washington Press, 2014.
• Cederlöf G. 1997. Bonds Lost: Subordination, Conflict and Mobilisation in Rural South India c. 1900-1970. Manhoar Publishers, New Delhi.