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Ravinder Kumar

Ph.D. candidate and Graduate Employee
History
Phone: 5415799292
Office: 350G McKenzie Hall
Office Hours: Winter 2024, Fridays 3 PM to 5 PM
Research Interests: British colonial India, the colonial and post-colonial states, and their interaction with indigenous communities, especially the nomadic and denotified tribes

Biography

Hello, I am Ravinder Kumar from Haryana, India. My journey in history began quite differently from that of most history students. I was studying science for my undergraduate degree in a small town called Narnaul, which is about 10 miles from the village where I was born and raised. However, I eventually realized that physics, chemistry, and mathematics were the proverbial three mistakes of my life, and I decided to switch my focus to history.

From 2017 to 2021, I prepared for government exams, did some other jobs, studied some history stuff, and taught high school students. My passion for research grew stronger when I came in contact with Dr. Rama Shanker Singh and Dr. Nishikant Kolge. In 2021, I earned the Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) through India's National Eligibility Test, which allowed me to pursue a PhD in Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Madras.

After two years of enriching coursework under the guidance of Professor Sudhir Chella Rajan and Dr. Sonika Gupta, I joined the University of Oregon's Department of History as a PhD student. My research, supervised by Dr. Arafaat Valiani, focuses on British colonial India, specifically examining the impact of colonial and post-colonial policies on the health and well-being of nomadic and denotified tribes.

I am fluent in Hindi, English, Punjabi, Haryanvi, and some Urdu. As a graduate employee (GE), I enjoy teaching and grading, and my other interests span politics, poetry, cinema, and Hindi literature. I am writing bad poems when I am not reading my history stuff.