I study symplectic geometry, the natural geometry of classical and quantum mechanics, where coordinates come in pairs corresponding to position and momentum. Replacing “phase spaces” with more abstract “symplectic manifolds,” the laws of physics translate into a way to measure 2-dimensional areas. I study problems at the interface of symplectic geometry, algebraic geometry, and discrete geometry. Most recently, I have been trying to identify and quantify the essential features of a symplectic structure and of the symmetries that preserve such a structure. With my collaborators, I have uncovered intriguing patterns in the quantitative data arising in our investigations. We have been able to verify a number of these patterns and there remain many open questions.

My teaching and research focus on the history of British colonialism on the Indian subcontinent. I am the author of two books, and more than a dozen journal articles and book chapters; in one way or another, they all focus on the relationship between colonial agents, officials, and elites and those who were colonized. Since I arrived at Cornell in 2005, I have taught courses on modern South Asia, the British empire, gender, and colonialism.

In 2023-24, I will be on sabbatic leave working on my next book, Moving Monuments, which follows the movement of commemorative statues made in studies in London and the British isles to various sites across the empire, most notably the Indian subcontinent. I have already published a few pieces related to this project: showing the relationship between colonial and confederate statues, explaining why there is no Rhodes statue in London and how George Curzon built a memorial hall in the city of Calcutta (now Kolkata).

My first book, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, is about conjugal relationships between colonial officials and residents and local women in India; the book focused on gender, culture, law, archives, and colonial governance in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century India. In connection with this research, I teach courses on South Asia, gender, sexuality and the state.

My recent book, Gentlemanly Terrorists, focuses on an underground  radical political movement in early and mid-twentieth century India and the ways in which political violence against the British colonial state became an important, but historically underemphasized, form of protest. While Gandhi’s nonviolent protest movements are often seen to be the hallmark of anticolonial protest, the book follows how the colonial state invested in security and emergency legislation to contain what they felt was an active terrorist threat.  In the process of writing this book, I have become fascinated with the ways that political violence has become a central part of popular historical narratives.

At Cornell, I have been involved with the Humanities Scholars Program, the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program, the South Asia Program, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the Society for the Humanities, the Institute for Social Sciences, the CIVIC initiative that emerged out of the Radical Collaborations projects.  Further afield, I have served on program and prize committees for the American Historical Association, American Institute of Indian Studies, Association of Asian Studies, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, and North American Conference on British Studies.  I am currently an associate editor for South Asia for the Journal of Asian Studies and the co-chair of the Association of Asian Studies conference in 2025.