Aparna Vaidik is historian of South Asia. She has previously taught at Georgetown University, Washington DC and University of Delhi and was educated at JNU, University of Cambridge, and St. Stephen’s College. She has to her credit a diverse set of monographs, journal articles and book chapters in volumes on environmental history, labour history, history of Indian nationalism and revolutionism, the history of the Indian Ocean and its islands and psychoanalytical history. Her most recent monograph is Waiting for Swaraj: Inner Lives of Indian Revolutionaries (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Her first monograph was Imperial Andamans: Colonial Encounter and Island History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and her book Revolutionaries on Trial: Sedition, Betrayal and Martyrdom (Aleph, 2022) is forthcoming. She has also written a work of a creative non-fiction titled My Son’s Inheritance: A Secret History of Lynching and Blood Justice in India (Aleph 2020). Currently she is working on a book project on the contemporary history of India titled ‘The Republic’s Preamble’ (Aleph, 2024). Underlying her various intellectual interests is an abiding fascination with the historian’s craft, specifically, historiography, theory and the historical method.