An interdisciplinary research collective
Reading the afterlives of empire.
The Empires Collective is an interdisciplinary cohort of researchers and academics that examines the legacies of imperialism through a critical-theoretical lens using multimedia formats. We are literary historians, film theorists, computer scientists, and philologists.
As a group we use a multiplicity of digital artefacts to explore the connection between culture and colonialism. Via blogs, podcasts, video games and discussion forums, we spotlight the sociopolitical and historical forms imperialism took in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, laying bare its links to the contemporary moment.
What we work on
Seven strands, one question
We are literary historians, film theorists, computer scientists and philologists. What holds the work together is not a period or a canon but a question: what did imperialism make, and what is it still making?
Diasporic crime fiction
Detective writing as colonial history in disguise — who is permitted to investigate, whose crimes are legible, and what the whodunit does with the nation. The subject of the first Empire Sleuths episode.
Identity and masculinity in Arabic fiction
How imperial encounter is written into gendered selfhood, and how Arabic literary form carries and resists it.
Digital infrastructures
The pipes, archives and platforms that now mediate cultural memory — and the older asymmetries they quietly reproduce.
Film strips and visual culture
Projection, circulation and the colonial image: what was shown, to whom, and on what apparatus.
Queer lives
Sexuality and its archives under and after empire, including what the record was built not to hold.
Memory and affect
Literary history as a history of feeling — how modern South Asian and global modernist writing holds loss, belonging and aftermath.
Periodical research
The nineteenth- and twentieth-century press as the infrastructure of empire: serial fiction, reprint networks and the making of a reading public.
The collective
Who we are
Dr Debolina Dey
Azim Premji University, Bhopal
Dr Maitrayee Roychoudhury
ARSD College, University of Delhi
Vaibhav Parel
Newcastle University
Dr Zehra Kazmi
Institute of Ismaili Studies
Abdullah Alahmari
University of St Andrews
Dr Clara Défaschel
University of St Andrews
Dr Anushrut Ramakrishnan Agrwaal
University of St Andrews
Dipankar Sarkar
Neul Labs
Mailing list
New episodes, new artefacts
An occasional letter: when an episode goes out, when something new appears in the gallery, and what the collective is reading. No more often than there is something to say.
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Common questions
What is the Empires Collective?
The Empires Collective is an interdisciplinary cohort of researchers and academics that examines the legacies of imperialism through a critical-theoretical lens, using multimedia formats. Its members are literary historians, film theorists, computer scientists and philologists. Rather than publishing only in journals, the collective works through podcasts, games and other digital artefacts to explore the connection between culture and colonialism.
Who is in the Empires Collective?
The collective currently has eight members: Dr Debolina Dey (Azim Premji University, Bhopal), Dr Maitrayee Roychoudhury (ARSD College, University of Delhi), Vaibhav Parel (Newcastle University), Dr Zehra Kazmi (Institute of Ismaili Studies), Abdullah Alahmari (University of St Andrews), Dr Clara Défaschel (University of St Andrews), Dr Anushrut Ramakrishnan Agrwaal (University of St Andrews) and Dipankar Sarkar (Neul Labs). Full biographies are on the collective page.
What does the collective publish?
one podcast episode of Empire Sleuths, each published with a full transcript, and one digital artefact: Empire Veil, a cooperative Victorian detective game about evidence, geography and the informal networks of women across the British Empire. Free, in the browser. Everything is free to read, listen to and play.
What does the collective research?
Its members work on diasporic crime fiction, identity and masculinity in Arabic fiction, digital infrastructures, film strips and visual culture, queer lives, memory and affect, and periodical research — spanning the sociopolitical and historical forms imperialism took in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and their links to the contemporary moment.
Where are the members based?
Members hold posts at Azim Premji University, Bhopal, ARSD College, University of Delhi, Newcastle University, Institute of Ismaili Studies, University of St Andrews and Neul Labs. The collective is not itself a department, institute or funded centre.
Can I join the Empires Collective, or take part?
Yes — the collective takes enquiries from researchers whose work touches its own, from prospective podcast guests, and from people who want to collaborate on a digital artefact. There is a form on the Join page, and a general contact form for anything else.
Working on something adjacent?
The collective is growing. If your research touches ours — or you would like to appear on the podcast, or build something with us — write in.