Yasmin Khan

Yasmin Cordery Khan is a British historian, novelist and broadcaster whose work focuses on the British Empire, Colonial India and the decolonisation of South Asia. She is a Fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford and Professor of Modern History based in the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education.^[1]

Khan completed her BA in History at St Peter's College, Oxford. Khan completed her DPhil at St Antony's College, Oxford in 2005 in Imperial and Commonwealth History.^[2]

Khan held positions at the University of Edinburgh and Royal Holloway, University of London before joining Kellogg College in 2012.^[2] Khan's work focuses on decolonisation, British migration histories, British Indian history, the Second World War and the End of Empire.^[1] In October 2024 she was awarded the Title of Distinction of Professor Modern History by the University of Oxford.^[3]

Khan is an editor of History Workshop Journal^[4] and a trustee of the Charles Wallace India Trust.^[5] She served as Kellogg College's senior tutor between 2019 and 2022.^[6][7]

Khan's publications include The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (2007),^[8] which won the Gladstone Book Prize from the Royal Historical Society^[9] and was long-listed for the Orwell Prize,^[10] and The Raj at War: A People's History of India's Second World War (2015).^[10][11] She has written for the Guardian newspaper,^[12] and appeared on Channel 4 News and BBC Radio.^[13]

Her first work of fiction, Edgware Road, was published in 2022.^[1] A second novel, Overland, was published in 2024.^[14]

Khan appeared on a programme discussing the life and work of Annie Besant.^[15]

Khan presented a three-part series for BBC 2 in 2018 based on ships' passenger lists between Britain and India to trace the stories of passengers during the three decades before Indian independence in 1947.^[16][17][18]

The first episode, based on the passenger list of the Viceroy of India, included the story of Mulk Raj Anand.^[19]

In 2020, Khan presented a three-part series with Professor Alice Roberts for BBC 2 on two major archeological digs carried out in London and Birmingham in preparation for building terminals for the HS2 high-speed railway.^[20]

• The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan. Yale University: Yale University Press. 2017 [2007]. ISBN 978-0300230321.
• The Raj at War: A People's History of India's Second World War. London: Vintage. 2015 [2016]. ISBN 978-0099542278.
• Khan, Yasmin Cordery (2022). Edgware Road. London: Head of Zeus Ltd., part of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. ISBN 9781801107341.