Rakesh Ankit studied history at Delhi, Oxford and Southampton, and taught at OP Jindal Global University (Sonipat, India), before joining Loughborough in 2018.
Rakesh’s previous research was on the evolution of the Kashmir conflict against the twin backdrops of Decolonisation and the Cold War, and on the Interim Governments in India, 1946-51. His next project looks at the nationalisation of commercial banks in India, 1969.
- Making and Unmaking of the Modern World Order
- From Rebellion to Partition: British India, 1857-1947
- After Empire: South Asia since 1945
Completed Postgraduate Research Students
- Franziska Karpinski: Between Depression and Zeal: Conceptions of Masculinity in the Wartime Letters of SS Hauptsturmführer Maximilian Guttenbrunner, 1939–1943)
Books
- India in the Interim: The 1947–1951 Nehru Government (CUP, 2024) https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/india-in-the-interim/15BC28370D1F4A4FEE71F1919D7A12E5
- India in the Interregnum: Interim Government, September 1946-August 1947 (OUP, 2019)
- The Kashmir Conflict: From Empire to the Cold War, 1945-66 (Routledge, 2016)
Book Chapters
- ‘State before Partition: India’s Interim Government under Wavell’, in Stephen Legg, William Gould and Charu Gupta (eds.) Communal Geographies: Before and Beyond Partition in South Asia (London: Routledge, 2025), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003582601
- ‘British High-Commissioners in India and Pakistan and the Kashmir Conflict, 1947-49’, in Rogelia Pastor-Castro and Martin Thomas (eds.) Embassies in Crisis: Studies of Diplomatic Missions in Testing Situations (London: Routledge, 2020), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351123501
Recent Articles
- ‘Anarchism and the “Fascination with Empire”: George Woodcock in India, 1964–1985’, with Matthew S. Adams, International Review of Social History, 06 February 2026, pp. 1-28. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S002085902610114X
- 'Colonial legacies and the British geological survey in cold war South Asia: 1960s–1980s', Contemporary South Asia https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09584935.2024.2380865
- ‘De-linking ‘the two rupees’: Devaluation dilemma and economic divergence in the decolonised subcontinent, September 1949-February 1951’, Modern Asian Studies, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X22000336
- ‘In Trust for the Three Nations? The India Office Library & Records Dispute, 1947-72’, Contemporary British History, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13619462.2022.2110471