Joppan George is an historian of modern South Asia with a keen interest in exploring the transformations of colonial society under the impact of science and technology.
Currently, he is working on a book project, Airborne Colony, which looks at the culture and politics of the everyday in South Asia shaped by the colonial aviatic practices. At its core are the specific deployments of airplanes for the production of knowledge of colonial subjects and environments through survey and surveillance to control, discipline, and extract value. This book project revises and expands on Joppan's doctoral dissertation that won the 2019 Brooke Hindle Postdoctoral Dissertation Fellowship awarded by the Society for the History of Technology.
Joppan George holds a PhD in History from Princeton University (2019) under the academic supervision of professors Gyan Prakash and Emily Thompson, and MA degrees in History (2013), and in Film Studies (2008).
Besides the history of the colonial aviatic, he is interested in colonial epistemologies, history of media technology, environmental history, and literary translations.