Priya Satia

Priya Satia's research interests span modern British cultural and political history, colonialism and imperialism, the experience and practice of war, technology and culture, human rights and humanitarianism, the state and institutions of government, arms trade, political economy of empire, and environmental history.

Satia was raised in Los Gatos, California and educated at Stanford, the London School of Economics, and the University of California, Berkeley where she earned her Ph.D. in 2004.  She is currently Assistant Professor of History at Stanford where she teaches courses on modern Britain and the British Empire. Her first book, Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of the Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East (OUP, 2008), won several major prizes, including the prestigious Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association. Her work can also be found in the American Historical Review, Past and Present, Technology and Culture, and elsewhere. Currently, Satia is researching the manufacture, trade, and use of small arms in the British empire for her book project, Guns: The True History of the British Empire.