Dr Erica Wald
Staff details
Academic qualifications
- BA History and Government, Smith College (1998)
- MSc Politics of Empire and Post Imperialism, London School of Economics and Political Science (2000)
- PhD History, Trinity College, Cambridge (2009)
Teaching
BA first year
BA second and third year
Empires in Comparative Perspective: Imperium Romanum to Pax Americana
Modern South Asia: Body, Society, Empire and Nation c. 1600-1947
MA
Mughals, Munshis and Mistresses: Society and Rule in Early Colonial India
Areas of supervision
Dr Erica Wald would welcome research proposals on South Asian history. In particular, she would be happy to supervise on all aspects of medical, military, gender, social and imperial history.
Research Interests
Dr Wald's research interests lie across the fields of imperial, social and medical history. In particular, Dr Wald focusses on the nineteenth century in colonial India.
Dr Wald's past research explored the interlinked themes of the military, medicine and morality in early nineteenth century India. Her book, Vice in the Barracks: Military, Medicine and the Making of Colonial India looks at the ways in which concerns over ‘vice-driven’ health threats – such as venereal disease and drunkenness in the army dictated the colonial state’s policies.
Dr Wald's new project examines the role of medical knowledge networks across British India.
Publications and research outputs
Book
Wald, Erica. 2014. Vice in the Barracks: Medicine, the Military and the Making of Colonial India, 1780-1868. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137270986
Book Section
Wald, Erica. 2019. Reading Social Spaces: the life of the Bombay Theatre, 1770-1843. In: Prashant Kidambi; Manjiri Kamat and Rachel Dwyer, eds. Bombay before Mumbai: Essays in Honour of Jim Masselos. London: Hurst Publishers, pp. 99-116. ISBN 9781787381483
Wald, Erica. 2017. At Ease, Soldier: Social Life in the Cantonment. In: Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand, eds. Culture, Conflict and the Military in Colonial South Asia. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 85-103. ISBN 9781138206724
Article
Wald, Erica. 2018. Governing the Bottle: Alcohol, Race and Class in Nineteenth-Century India. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 46(3), pp. 397-417. ISSN 0308-6534
Wald, Erica. 2012. Health, Discipline and Appropriate Behaviour : the Body of the Soldier and Space of the Cantonment. Modern Asian Studies, 46(4), pp. 815-856. ISSN 0026-749X
Wald, Erica. 2009. Defining Prostitution and Redefining Women’s Roles: The Colonial State and Society in Early 19th Century India. History Compass, 7(6), pp. 1470-1483.
Wald, Erica. 2009. 'From Begums to Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women: Sexual Relationships, Venereal Disease and the Redefinition of Prostitution in Early Nineteenth-Century India. Indian Economic Social History Review, 46(1), pp. 5-25. ISSN 0019-4646
