Please join the History Department for the semi-annual Vincent P. DeSantis Lecture. Dr. Mou Banerjee, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will deliver a lecture titled "Habeas Corpus and Christian Conversion in Colonial India: A Micro-Historical Approach" The lecture will take place in Decio 442 from 4:00-5:00 PM on Thursday, November 20th, 2025. A reception will follow on the fourth floor of Decio Hall. The lecture is open to all and registration is not required.
Dr. Mou Banerjee received her PhD from the Department of History at Harvard in 2018. Her dissertation research was funded by the award of the 2013 SSRC-IDRF dissertation research fellowship and she received the Harold K. Gross award, an annual award by the faculty of the History Department at Harvard to the graduate student whose dissertation “gives greatest promise of a distinguished career of historical research.”
Dr. Banerjee’s first book, “The Disinherited: Christianity and Conversion in Colonial India, 1813-1907” was published in January 2025 from Harvard University Press. Her research has appeared in multiple journals such as the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS), the journal Political Theology, Perspectives on History of the AHA, etc. She has also written for newspapers and periodicals such as The Telegraph and the Anandabazar Patrika of India and The Daily Star of Bangladesh. At UW-Madison she runs the Nonviolence Project, which highlights student research on civil rights and nonviolent movements across the world.
Currently, she is working on her second book, under contract with Juggernaut Press, India, which is an intellectual history of the life and times of the pioneering Indian social reformer Raja Rammohan Roy.
Originally published at history.nd.edu.