Padma Anagol is a historian known for her work on women's agency and subjectivities in colonial India.[1] Her work broadly focuses on gender and women's history in colonial British India. Her research interests also include a wide spectrum of topics such as material culture, consumption and Indian middle classes, theory, historiography and periodization of Modern India and comparative histories of Victorian and Indian patriarchies over the issues of social legislation (age of consent).[1]
Anagol comes from the conflict-ridden border area of Belgaum district,[2] Karnataka, India. As a border child, she is well-versed in both Kannada and Marathi, and straddles multiple identities. She was born to Mr. Jayakumar Anagol and Mrs. Kusumavati Anagol. Mr. Jayakumar Angol was a lecturer in philosophy at the Lingaraj College, Belgaum, Karnataka, and worked alongside A. K. Ramanujam before joining the services. Her maternal grandparents, Devendrappa Doddanavar and Lilavati Doddanavar, actively participated in the Indian freedom movement and were awarded 'freedom fighters' pension by the Karnataka State Government.[3]
Anagol graduated from the University of Mysore, Mysore, Karnataka, India. She is an alumna of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, where she pursued her Masters in Modern and Contemporary Indian History and did an M.Phil. in International Relations. She was awarded a five year scholarship in 1987 by Indian Council of Social Science Research, Delhi, India, for a Ph.D. in history, which she declined in favour of the Commonwealth Scholarship to the School of Oriental and Asian Studies, University of London, London.[1]
Anagol is a Reader in history at the Cardiff School of History, Religion and Archaeology, Cardiff University, Wales, United Kingdom (UK).[1] She teaches British Imperial and Modern Indian History at the Cardiff University. Fluent in three Indian languages, Anagol mainly uses Marathi (Devanagari script) and Kannada (Dravidian script) for her research work. Much of her research work is anchored in understanding women's subjectivities. She has also held visiting fellowships at various institutions. Before joining as a senior lecturer at the Cardiff School of History, Religion and Archaeology in 1995, Dr. Anagol taught south Asian history at the Bath Spa University, Bath, UK from 1993-95.
Anagol was the editor of Cultural and Social History, a journal published under the aegis of Social History society, UK from 2006-2011.[1] She is the founder member of Asian Literatures in translation, an online journal.[4] She is also a member of the editorial board of South Asia Research[5] and Women's History Review.[6] A believer in popular history, Anagol likes to disseminate information about the past and its uses to public and has taken on the position of Asia Consultant for BBC History Magazine since 2001.[7]
She won the student poll for an 'Enriching Student Life Award' at Cardiff University in 2017.
Anagol has embarked on a project of collating primary source materials by bringing together women's voices during the colonial era, under the title of Women in Colonial India:1757-1947: A Primary Source Collection. The collection is a collaboration with Geraldine Forbes and is to be presented in six volumes on broad themes and projects that include: The Body and Sexuality, Law, Religion, Power, Work and Personalities. The proposal for this collection is prompted by three core aims: the need to acquaint students and scholars with a wider range of materials than what is available for studying women in India, and the importance of situating examples of women's agency, resistance, and compliance within the contexts that produced the.[clarification needed] The project has a home in the respectable publishing house-Bloomsbury Academic Press and the first volume on 'Body' will be published in 2019.
