Prachi Deshpande (born 14 December 1972) is an Indian historian and Associate Professor in History at Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.
[1] Deshpande completed her undergraduate and post graduate education in History at Fergusson College, Pune and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi respectively before moving to the United States to pursue her PhD from Tufts University, Medford, MA.
Her book, Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700-1960 (2007) explores modern history writing practices in Marathi-speaking parts of Western India and its impact on shaping Maharashtrian regional identity.
[2] Her other notable academic work include 'Scripting the Cultural History of Language: Modi in the Colonial Archive' and 'The writerly self: Literacy, discipline and codes of conduct in early modern western India (2016)'.
[2] In 2020, Deshpande received the Infosys Prize for Humanities – History for her extraordinarily nuanced and highly sophisticated treatment of South Asian historiography.