Robin Jeffrey, BA (Vic, BC), DPhil (Sussex)
Emeritus Professor, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies

Email: robin.jeffrey@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

I was educated at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada (BA, 1967) and the University of Sussex in the UK (D.Phil., 1973). I first worked as a journalist on the Daily Colonist in Victoria, BC (1963-7). I taught school in Chandigarh in north India for the Regional Institute of English and the Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO) from 1967-9 before doing a doctorate in modern Indian history at Sussex. I came to the ANU as a research fellow from 1973-8 and taught in the Politics Program at La Trobe University in Melbourne from 1979-2005.

My special interest is in the modern history and politics of India. I have written about both Punjab in the north and Kerala in the south and have most recently worked on the Indian newspaper industry and on Indian media more generally.

Research Interests

I maintain an interest in matrilineal societies, particularly in Kerala in south India, which arose from my doctoral thesis, later published as The Decline of Nayar Dominance. Having worked as a teacher in Punjab, I was driven to try to understand the Khalistan secessionist movement that arose from 1981. This resulted in What's Happening to India? and a continuing interest in ethnicity, nationalism and identity formation. My two other interests are "development" in a wide sense (Politics, Women and Well-Being) and newspapers and media (India's Newspaper Revolution).

My current substantial project is an account of India in the second half of the twentieth century, based on portraits of the six years in which the great Kumbh mela was held (1942, 1954, 1966, 1977, 1989 and 2001). Provisionally entitled "Slices of India," the project tries to capture the drama of change by drawing attention to the contingencies that decide what paths are followed and what paths, though apparently promising, are ultimately ignored.