Early Life and Education
Prof. (Dr.) Arup K. Chatterjee was born in 1986 in Calcutta. He is an Indian professor of English, cultural historian and public intellectual whose work spans archival research, literary criticism, and widely read public writing. He studied at the University of Delhi and later at the Centre for English Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
He earned his PhD in 2014–15 for a dissertation titled Hillmaking: Architecture and Literature from the Doon Valley. His professional life began in 2007 as a freelance journalist at The Telegraph, India. Over the years he developed a substantial body of scholarship, editorial initiatives, translations and essays that connect historical archives and material culture with contemporary discourse.
Scholarship and Major Books
Chatterjee’s scholarship examines large cultural formations such as railways, diasporas, islands and bridges as interpretive frameworks for understanding modern India’s imagination, politics and historical memory. He is the author of The Purveyors of Destiny: A Cultural Biography of the Indian Railways, published by Bloomsbury in 2017 and later issued in a revised form as the bestselling The Great Indian Railways in 2018.
His second major work, Indians in London: From the Birth of the East India Company to Independent India, was published in 2021. He has written more than thirty peer-reviewed research papers as well as numerous essays, reviews and public commentaries for national and international platforms.
Chatterjee’s recent research focuses on the oceanic landform known as Adam’s Bridge or Ram Setu. His academic monograph Adam’s Bridge: Sacrality, Performance, and Heritage of an Oceanic Marvel was published by Routledge in 2024. The study offers a transdisciplinary analysis of the tombolo’s sacred traditions, colonial cartographies, geological debates and political contestations.
Building on this work, he wrote Ram Setu: Memoirs of an Enchanted Bridge, published in 2025 by Rupa Publications. Intended for a broader readership, the book re-interprets the academic research in a narrative form that blends myth, science, coastal voices and contemporary public debates. It has generated considerable attention in media and cultural forums.
Editing, Poetry, Translation and Public Interventions
In 2011 Chatterjee founded Coldnoon: International Journal of Travel Writing and Travelling Cultures, serving as its Chief Editor until 2018. The journal played a formative role in establishing travel writing as an interdisciplinary academic field.
He translated Urdu poems by Firaq Gorakhpuri for the biography The Poet of Pain and Ecstasy, published by Roli in 2015. He has been writing poetry for more than fifteen years, and his first full collection is scheduled for publication in 2026.
His public essays on culture, history, literature and politics have appeared widely, attracting global readership and cross-disciplinary engagement.
Fellowships, Visiting Positions and Consultancies
Chatterjee has held several international fellowships and visiting positions that reflect his global scholarly engagement. These include the Charles Wallace Fellowship in the United Kingdom in 2014, a visiting fellowship at Brunel University London in 2017–18, a Research Associate and Visiting Scholar position at SOAS, University of London, in 2022–23, and a Visiting Professorship at the University of the Faroe Islands in Tórshavn from January to July 2024.
He has also served as a consultant and critical advisor to museum and exhibition projects. Notably, he advised the Horniman Museum in London on a tea-related exhibition based on his research and his theory of gastromythology, a concept he coined and developed in 2019. The term has been acknowledged by The Telegraph in the United Kingdom, and academic papers on the concept have been published in leading peer-reviewed journals.
Intellectual Profile and Public Resonance
Chatterjee’s intellectual work is interdisciplinary in scope and method. His interests include British imperial and Victorian encounters with India, colonial and postcolonial historiography, intellectual history, intersections of Indian philosophical traditions with psychoanalytic interpretations, and the cultural lives of material structures such as railways and island formations.
His scholarship is marked by a combination of archival depth and narrative clarity. His academic and popular books have drawn significant attention from scholars, journalists and general readers, establishing him as a prominent voice in contemporary cultural and historical studies.
