Dr Heeral Chhabra

Visiting Research Fellow

Dr Heeral Chhabra

Visiting Research Fellow, October - November, 2024

Home Institution:University of Liverpool

Heeral is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with the ROH Indies project (Remaking One Health: Decolonial Approaches to Street Dogs and Rabies Prevention in India) at University of Liverpool. She was awarded PhD from the University of Delhi (2022) for her thesis Animal ‘Welfare’, State Regulations and Questions of Cruelty c.1890-1940swhich sought to understand animal-human relationships in colonial India through the prism of law.  Her career trajectory so far has led her to research positions and teaching endeavours globally. She will be a Visiting Fellow at IASH, Edinburgh University this semester. She has also been a Global History Fellow at International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam), and a Junior Research Fellow at Indian Council of Historical Research during her doctoral research. She has also undertaken postgraduate and undergraduate teaching at University of Liverpool (UK), La Trobe University (Australia), University of Delhi (India) (as Assistant Professor), and Ashoka University (as a Teaching fellow). 

As a researcher she has contributed through articles, chapter contributions, and book reviews with international journals and publishers. Her publications include – “Locating animals in the archives: the case of colonial India”, in archives: the case of colonial India”, in Animals as Experiencing Entities: Theories and Historical Narratives, Palgrave Macmillan (2024) ; “Making violent killings ‘humane’: State sponsored elimination of ‘stray’ dogs in colonial India” in ‘Violence Against Animals: Argos- Historical and Archaeological Animal Studies, Vol. 1’ Germany, Animot (2020) ; “Animal Labourers and the Law in Colonial India published” in South Asia Research (2019) ; and “Schools for European and Eurasian children in India: Making of the official policy in colonial India and its contemporary significance” in Policy Futures in Education (2015).  She is currently working on her manuscript The Barking Subjects of Empire: The History of Street Dog-Human relations in Colonial India, and also co-editing two books - Animals and South Asian History: Species, People and Environment (based on the first exclusive conference on Animal History in India, co-organised at Ashoka University in 2021); and Writing Global History from Global South [based on SAGHN’S conferences (South Asia Global History Network), of which she is a co-founder].  Her primary research focuses on the history of human-animal relationships and animal ‘welfare’ in colonial India, and also expands to environmental history, global history, the history of education and the pedagogy of history.

Project title: Preventing the Incurable: Rabies and Street Dog-Human Relations in Colonial India

This research deals with rabies and its impact on street dog-human relations in colonial India. It seeks to do so by incorporating animal history, animal studies and more than human histories approach to understand the entanglements of street dogs and human health. Rabies is a global, transnational disease which cuts across regions and specie boundaries. It’s presence since ancient times is well attested. However, its global spread in 19th and 20th centuries coupled with colonial domination had adverse socio-legal implication for street dogs across the world. In much of Global North, the ‘stray’ dogs were blamed as the main spreader of rabies, prompting orchestrated efforts for their mass elimination through shooting, poisoning, use of lethal chambers etc. The fear of rabies accompanied with a distinct sense of urban spaces and hygiene movement eventually led to ‘dog-free’ streets in 19th and 20th centuries in most of the colonial metropoles, Britain being one of them. The net effect was – it made presence of street dogs an anomaly in Global North. These ideas and association of rabies accompanied with implicated image of street dogs were brought to the colonies like India as well. These tendencies, however, were incongruent with the lived realities of street dogs who have been historically present on Indian street for many centuries. Juxtaposing these living realities with fear of rabies, I seek to analyse the contestation and enmeshing of street dogs with social, political, global concerns of the empire through the vantage points of colonial officials, dogs and the associated human groups.