Lucy Chester

Affiliated Faculty are not employees of the Center for Asian Studies. Please contact this faculty member at their home department.

Education

Ph.D., History, Yale University, 2002
M.A., History, Yale University, 1998
B.A., History, Yale University, 1996

Regional and Thematic Interests

British imperial and anticolonial history in South Asia

Profile

Professor Chester teaches courses on British imperialism, nationalism, and anticolonialism. Her classes focus on South Asia in a transnational context, with attention to the Middle East and Africa. Some of the courses she teaches include "Borderlands of Empire," "Decolonization of the British Empire," and a capstone seminar on South Asian nationalism. Professor Chester also teaches in the International Affairs program.

Professor Chester received both her B.A. summa cum laude and Ph.D. from Yale. Her first book, Borders and Conflict in South Asia (Manchester University Press, 2009), explores the drawing of the boundary between India and Pakistan in 1947. Her current book manuscript (under contract with Oxford University Press) examines connections between India and the Palestine Mandate in the 1920s-1940s. Chester is in the early stages of a project on the geographical imagination of Pakistan. Her work has been supported by the American Institute for Pakistan Studies, the American Institute for Indian Studies, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

Selected Publications

2009 Borders and Conflict in South Asia: The Radcliffe Boundary Commission and the Partition of Punjab. Manchester, UK: Manchester UP.

2008 “Factors Impeding the Effectiveness of Partition in South Asia and the Palestine Mandate.” In Order, Conflict, and Violence, edited by Stathis Kalyvas et al, 27-96. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

2008 “Boundary Commissions as Tools to Safeguard British Interests at the End of Empire.” Journal of Historical Geography 34, no. 3: 494-515.