Nicholas Dirks

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Nicholas Dirks is the Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Professor of History at Columbia University, where he is also Vice President of Arts and Sciences and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Dirks is married to Columbia professor, Janaki Bakhle.^[1]

Dirks is the author of numerous books on South Asian history and culture, primarily concerned with the impact of British colonial rule. His most famous works include The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (1987), Castes of Mind (2001), and Scandal of Empire (2006). In these works Dirks has advanced research on how the character of British rule shaped the Indian subcontinent to come, as well as how Britain's development came to be influenced by its colonies.

Dirks was born in Iowa but grew up in New Haven, where his father was a professor at Yale University. When the latter received a Fulbright scholarship in 1963, the Dirks family relocated to Madras, where Nicholas' interest in Indian culture first formed. He attended Wesleyan, from which he received a B.A. in 1972, and the University of Chicago, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1981, and where he came under the influence of historical anthropologist Bernard Cohn. During this period he habitually returned for research purposes to South India. After teaching at the California Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan, Dirks moved to Columbia in 1997, where he dramatically altered the direction of the anthropology department, championing postcolonial and postmodern approaches. This he achieved through a variety of strategic appointments. He has acted in a similar way, in his new capacity as an administrator of one of the nation's oldest and most elite institutions, in regard to the university in general. Dirks is married to Janaki Bakhle, an assistant professor of history at Columbia). They divide their time between New York City and the Southern Berkshires in Massachusetts, which Dirks has characterized as a "quiet and gentle sanctuary."