About the project

This project will contribute to the global intellectual history of scientific practices in the twentieth century; and address the negotiation and relocation of racial colour line and colonial difference in practice.9 Following the intellectual genealogies of the conceptual categories (universal scientific language, cooperation, colonialism and anti-colonialism), this research project will use global intellectual history methods, thereby discursively weaving in a varied range of archival sources: Bose and Bannerjea’s papers at the League of Nations Archive in Geneva (in English and French, 314 pages in 7 files); their correspondence with other European members of the committee (in French and German – most notably with Albert Einstein, to be digitally accessed from Princeton University Einstein papers); and Bose and Bannerjea’s travelogues and related writings in Bangla (in four Calcutta-based journals – Prabasi, Basumati, Bharatbarsha and The Modern Review, to be digitally retrieved through Heidelberg University’s South Asia Collection).

About the researcher

Arnab Dutta is a PhD candidate at The Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture (ICOG), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands, and a PhD member of the University Committee for Academic Practice (UCW), an independent advisory committee of the Board of the University. Previously, he held the position of the Secretary of the PhD Council of the Faculty of Arts (2018 – 19). Funded by a DAAD fellowship (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst), he is currently a visiting PhD at the Global Intellectual History Graduate School, Freie Universität Berlin.

His research interests are in cultural and intellectual history of early twentieth century Europe, South Asian critical thought, and Postcolonial Studies.