Selwyn College has become the first ever institution to create a fellowship in indentureship studies. Indentureship was an exploitative labour system that the British Empire used to replace slavery, particularly in the Indian subcontinent.

The first Ramesh and Leela Narain visiting bye-fellow in Indentureship Studies will be Professor Gaiutra Bahadur. Professor Bahadur is a journalist and former Nieman Fellow at Harvard. She is currently an associate professor at Rutgers University-Newark in New Jersey, USA. Her 2013 book Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture studies the experience of Indian female indentured labourers, including her great-grandmother, in nineteenth century colonial plantations. It was shortlisted for the 2014 Orwell Prize.

Professor Bahadur commented: “I am honoured and delighted to be the inaugural visiting bye-fellow in indentureship studies. When I first began doing research in this area, the funding just wasn’t there, so it was in many ways a labour of love. That’s why I’m so happy to see there’s now visibility and funding like this to help future researchers.”

Selwyn has partnered with the Ameena Gafoor Institute that is dedicated to the study of indentureship and its legacies. The 2022 University of Cambridge Advisory Group on Legacies of Enslavement Report acknowledged Selwyn and the Ameena Gafoor Institute’s efforts to establish “a visiting scholars programme” on indentureship. A launch event to raise funding for the programme took place at the House of Lords in 2021. The report further recommended that the University research indentureship so that “the scope of research is not limited to consideration of the Atlantic slave trade alone.”

The fellowship will be in place for an initial five years, with each appointed scholar spending eight weeks at Cambridge where they will conduct their research. There is hope that enough funding will be raised to create a permanent professorship at Cambridge in indentureship studies.

The director of the Ameena Gafoor Institute, Professor David Dabydeen, is a novelist, poet and former English student at Selwyn. Professor Dabydeen commented: “The study and documentation of indentureship is undoubtedly valuable, but it has barely been included in the history syllabi of British and European Universities – a staggering omission considering the millions of individuals, and indeed entire cultures, irrevocably shaped by indentureship and its legacies.”

“That is why this fellowship, and hopefully eventually establishing a Professorship, is so important. Cambridge has created an academic subject, bringing it from the margins to the very centre. I am immensely grateful to the Gafoor family in Guyana for helping to make all this possible.”

Professor Bahadur is set to give a public talk and Q&A on Coolie Woman at Selwyn College on 27 July.