Priya Satia

Priya Satia, PhD

  • Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History
  • Professor of History
  • Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center

History Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2024

(650) 723-9534 (voice)

Biography

Priya Satia is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and Professor of History at Stanford. She specializes in modern British and British empire history, especially in the Middle East and South Asia. Satia was raised in Los Gatos, California and educated at Stanford, the London School of Economics, and the University of California, Berkeley where she earned her Ph.D. in 2004.

Her first book, Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of the Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East (OUP, 2008), won several major prizes, including the prestigious Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association. Her second book, Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (Penguin, 2018) also won several prizes, including the American Historical Association's Jerry Bentley Prize. Satia's latest book, Time's Monster: How History Makes History (Belknap HUP/Penguin UK, 2020), has also won multiple prizes. Her work can also be found in the American Historical ReviewPast & PresentTechnology & CultureHumanity, and other scholarly journals. Satia's writes frequently for popular media outlets such as the Washington Post, Time Magazine, The New Republic, The Nation, Slate.com, the LA Review of Books, and other outlets. 

Satia's research was featured in The Europe Center May 2018 Newsletter.

publications

Books
October 2020

Time’s Monster: How History Makes History

Author(s)
cover link Time’s Monster: How History Makes History
Books
April 2018

Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution

Author(s)
cover link Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution
Commentary
August 2017

Global roots of India’s freedom struggle

Author(s)
cover link Global roots of India’s freedom struggle