About Dr Luna Sabastian
Luna Sabastian is the newest addition to the History faculty at Northeastern University London. She joins us from the University of Cambridge, where she was Smuts Research Fellow from 2019 to 2022. With a background in Religious Studies, Psychology, and Postcolonial Studies, Luna retrained as a historian at the University of Cambridge, where she completed her PhD just before the pandemic hit. Her PhD thesis, which is titled “Indian Political Thought and Germany’s Fascism, ca. 1918-1950,” straddles her interests in India, Germany, and their tremendously violent histories in the twentieth century.
Qualifications
PhD in History, University of Cambridge (2020)
MPhil in Historical Studies, University of Cambridge (2015)
MA in Postcolonial Studies, SOAS, University of London (2014)
BA in Religious Studies and Psychology, Ruprecht-Karls Universität Heidelberg (2012)
Dr Luna Sabastian's Research
Luna is a historian of modern Indian history and its political thought, best known for her work on the political thought of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) and Indian fascism. Her work engages the decolonial impetus to consider India as a creator of novel political ideas. Political violence is a recurring theme and major drive of her work. Combining rigorous archival research across continents and languages with close readings and a flair for high political theory, her work offers new perspectives on German and Indian fascism and concepts of race and caste, and explores the foundations of sovereignty in India, from gendered violence to legal codification, to yoga. Luna’s recent publications explore themes of anti-colonial nationalism, political violence, gender, and race. She is writing a book on Indian Fascism: Race, Caste, and Sovereignty.
Selected publications:
“‘Savarkar’s Miscegenous Hindu Race,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (forthcoming).
“Women, Sovereignty, Violence: ‘Rakshasa’ Marriage by Capture in Modern Indian Political Thought,” Modern Intellectual History 19, no. 3 (2022): 757-92. DOI: 10.1017/S1479244321000391.
“Spaces on the Temporal Move: Weimar Geopolitik and the Vision of an Indian Science of the State, 1924-45,” Global Intellectual History 3, no. 2 (2018): 231-53. DOI: 10.1080/23801883.2018.1450619.
Dr Luna Sabastian's Teaching
Britain and the World: Interaction and Empire
The City in American Political Life: 1776 to the Present Day
From the Ancient Greeks to Modern Pluralism
Global Fascism (Course development)
Political Thought beyond Europe (Course development)
Dr Sabastian would like to hear from students interested in writing dissertations on modern Indian history, intellectual history, colonialism and anti-colonialism, fascism, and histories of race.