Nalina Gopal

Nalina’s research interests lie broadly at the intersection of race, colonialism, and diasporas of empire. Specifically, she is drawn to the histories of Straits Tamils located in Malacca, Penang, and Singapore collectively known as the Straits Settlements during their administration by the East India Company (1786 – 1867). 

In her doctoral research, she investigates the efficacy of petitions in tracing the shifting status of Straits Tamils. She seeks to nuance conceptions of petitioning by dwelling on subordinate rhetoric in the Company era, viewed through the prism of the settled Tamil community’s experience in the Straits Settlements. By making use of documents in the collections of the British Library, the National Archives of Singapore and the UK, the National Library Board and National Museum of Singapore, and the Tamil Nadu State Archives, Nalina’s project explores petitions as sites of performance and situational rhetoric. In surveying polyglossic conventions adopted to draft petitions to the Company, her research seeks to situate petition writers and scribes as crucial to the configuration of such transregional palimpsests. Nalina’s project argues also for the consideration of petitions as instruments of negotiation and education that aided the fledgling society learn to dialogue with the colonial administration. Ultimately, her project is concerned with the self-fashioning of race, class, and gender within the situation of the petition. 

Nalina has a B.A. in History and an M.A. in International Studies from the University of Madras. Before joining UCL, Nalina worked in the museum sector in India and Singapore, curating South Asian collections for non-profit and public sector institutions, and in independent practice. She has also held fellowships with the National Library Board and National Heritage Board of Singapore, focusing  on acquisitions and collecting strategies. With almost two decades of sustained engagement with the region as a long-time resident of Singapore, she has come to regard it as inseparable from her intellectual and affective life.

PhD

Supervisor: Dr Jagjeet Lally (Primary) and Dr Mark Frost (Secondary)
Working title: Power on Paper: Straits Tamil Petitions to the East India Company in Malacca, Penang, and Singapore (1786 – 1867)
Expected Completion Date: 2027
 

Awards 

PhD

Royal Historical Society PhD Research Support Grant, 2025

Masters

Bharat Petroleum Academic Scholarship, 2005

Hindustan Lever Academic Scholarship, 2005
 

Teaching

• Postgraduate Teaching Assistant, HIST0901, India and the Early Modern World, UCL, 2024/2025.
• Postgraduate Teaching Assistant, HIST0008, Making History, UCL, 2024/2025. 
   

Conferences

• Oaths as Performative Utterances: Exploring the Intersection of Language and Law in early Colonial Singapore, Penang, and Malacca (18th – 20th centuries), Oaths and Oath-Taking in Historical Perspective, 1600 to the Present organised by Dr. James McConnel and Dr. Henry Miller with support from the Past and Present Society, the Social History Society, and History: The Journal of the Historical Association, Postponed to July 2026.
• Under the Watchful Eye: Negotiating the Limits of Colonial Policing in the British Straits Settlements during the Nineteenth Century, Mobilising Imperial History: Crime, Policing and Control in the British Empire, organised by University of Kent with support from Royal Historical Society, 15 July 2025.
• Obscure Odysseys: Chronicles of Coromandel Coast Natives, paper presented at Sojourners to Settlers: Tamils in Southeast Asia and Singapore Conference, organised by Institute of Policy Studies and Indian Heritage Centre, Singapore, 6 – 7 December, 2019. 
   

Other Professional Activities

• Graduate Research Assistant, working with the India Office Records for a project run by Dr. Joshua Ehrlich at the University of Macau, December 2024 – May 2025.
• Visual Arts Cataloguer (John Fritz and George Michell Collection of Hampi Materials), British Library, August 2024 – October 2024.
• Curatorial Fellow, National Heritage Board, Singapore, February 2024 – December 2024
• George Lyndon Hicks Fellow, National Library Board, Singapore, November 2022 – August 2023.
• Co-editor, Sojourners to Settlers: Tamils in Southeast Asia and Singapore, Singapore: Institute of Policy Studies Singapore and Indian Heritage Centre, 2019.

Public Engagement

• Discussant, Panel Discussion: The Great Mughals at the V&A organised by The Centre for the Study of South Asia and the Indian Ocean World, 3 February 2025.
• Discussant with artist Yasmin Hayat, ‘South Asia’ + ‘Middle East’ + ‘Early Modern’ Workshop organised by The Centre for the Study of South Asia and the Indian Ocean World, 21 June 2024.
• Featured expert, Podcast for MRadio. “Art Meets Social – Curating for the 21st Century.” Episode 2. National Heritage Board. November 27, 2020.
• A Sea of Change, an Ocean of Memories: Crossings of the Indian Diaspora at the Friends of the Museum (Singapore) Lecture Series, 20 Jan 2017. 

Memberships

• Student Member, Royal Historical Society, 2024 - Present
• Member, Singapore Heritage Society, 2022 – Present
• Member, Genealogical Society Singapore, 2022 – Present
• Member, International Council of Museums, 2016 - Present

Contact

Email: nalina.gopal.23@ucl.ac.uk

Qualifications

• B.A.History, University of Madras - 2004
• M.A.International Studies, University of Madras - 2006