# Maya Jasanoff X.D. and Nancy Yang Professor Coolidge Professor of History ![Maya Jasanoff](/sites/g/files/omnuum4421/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/history/files/jasanoff_head_shot_3_full_res.jpg?itok=hEkpKX-W) smartphone [617-998-5422](tel:617-998-5422) email laptop\_windows [The Center for European Studies](https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/#/people/profile/jasanoff) *On Leave Academic Year 2025-2026* Maya Jasanoff’s teaching and research extend from the history of the British Empire to global history. She is the author of three prize-winning books. [The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World ](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781594205811)(Penguin Press, 2017) examines the dynamics of modern globalization through the life and times of the novelist Joseph Conrad. A *New York Times* best book of 2017, *The Dawn Watch* won the Cundill Prize in History, and was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize in Biography. Her previous book, [Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World ](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/86852/libertys-exiles-by-maya-jasanoff/9781400075478/)(Knopf, 2011), presents the first global history of the loyalists who fled the United States after the American Revolution and resettled elsewhere in the British Empire. *Liberty's Exiles* received numerous distinctions including the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction and the George Washington Book Prize; it was also shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize. Her first book, the Duff Cooper Prize-winning [Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850 ](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/86851/edge-of-empire-by-maya-jasanoff/9781400075461/)(Knopf, 2005), explores British expansion in India and Egypt through the lives of art collectors, and was a book of the year selection in publications including *The Economist*, *The Guardian*, and *The Sunday Times*. Jasanoff is currently working on a wide-ranging book about the human preoccupation with ancestry, and in December, 2021, will deliver the Lawrence Stone Lectures at Princeton University on connections between fiction and history-writing in English. Jasanoff enjoys teaching courses that bring out the "story" in history. In addition to classes on imperial history, she offers a multidisciplinary Gen Ed course on the topic of "Ancestry: Where Do We Come From and Why Do We Care?" and an upper-level seminar on the craft of writing historical narrative. In 2015 Jasanoff was named a Harvard College Professor for excellence in undergraduate teaching. From 2019 to 2022, she is a part-time Visiting Professor at [Ahmedabad University](https://ahduni.edu.in/sas/) in India, where she has been helping launch new curricula in the liberal arts. Jasanoff has been a Guggenheim Fellow (2013), a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, a Kluge Chair at the Library of Congress, and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. She has participated in several BBC documentaries, and her essays and reviews regularly appear in publications including *The New York Review of Books*, *The Guardian*, and *The New York Times*. In 2017, Jasanoff was awarded the [Windham-Campbell Prize](http://windhamcampbell.org/2017/winner/maya-jasanoff) in recognition of her contributions to non-fiction literature. She is chair of judges for the 2021 [Booker Prize](https://thebookerprizes.com/). Selected Publications: - [“Misremembering the British Empire” in The New Yorker (October, 2020)](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/02/misremembering-the-british-empire) - [“Lost Calcutta” in The New York Review of Books (May, 2019)](https://nybooks.com/articles/2019/05/23/lost-calcutta/) - ["Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and the Art of Ambivalence" in The New Yorker (January, 2019)](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/07/ruth-prawer-jhabvala-and-the-art-of-ambivalence) - ["How Joseph Conrad Foresaw the Dark Heart of Brexit Britain" in The Guardian (October, 2017)](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/28/how-joseph-conrad-foresaw-the-dark-heart-of-brexit-britain) - ["The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in the Global World" (Penguin Random House, 2017)](http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/315029/the-dawn-watch-by-maya-jasanoff/9781594205811/) - ["At Sea With Joseph Conrad" in The New York Times (August 2015)](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/opinion/sunday/at-sea-with-joseph-conrad.html?_r=0) - "[A Passage from Hong Kong" in The New York Review of Books (April 2014)](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/04/03/passage-hong-kong/) - [Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (Knopf/Harper Press, 2011)](http://www.randomhouse.com/book/86852/libertys-exiles-by-maya-jasanoff/9781400041688/) - [Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850 (Knopf/Fourth Estate, 2005)](http://www.randomhouse.com/book/86851/edge-of-empire-by-maya-jasanoff) - ## Faculty [Core Faculty](/faculty/core-faculty) - ## Last Initial (Faculty) [J](/first-letter-last-name/j) - ## Geographic Region [Asia](/region-study/asia) [Atlantic](/region-study/atlantic) [Britain](/region-study/britain) [Europe](/region-study/europe) [International](/region-study/international) - ## Theme and Methodology [Cultural History](/theme/cultural-history) [Digital History](/theme/digital-history) [Global & Transnational](/theme/global-transnational) [Immigration](/theme/immigration) [Imperial History](/theme/imperial-history) [International History](/theme/international-history) - ## Time Period [17th & 18th Centuries](/time-period/17th-18th-centuries) [19th Century](/time-period/19th-century) [20th Century](/time-period/20th-century)