Ruby LalProfessor

Ruby Lal is an acclaimed historian of India and professor of South Asian history at Emory University. Her work centers on restoring erased female figures and their histories, particularly from the Mughal Empire. She is the author of four critically acclaimed books and numerous essays. Her most recent book, Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan, is a finalist for James Tait Prize and Georgia Author of the Year Award, and has been lauded by the BBC, The Hindu, Vogue India, The Wall Street Journal, and American Kahani, among others. Her previous book Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2018. In Spring 2025, she published Tiger-Slayer, an illustrated remix for young adults based on her award-winning book Empress. Lal is the recipient of numerous fellowships, among them from the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies (SCAS), Uppsala, Sweden, and as Public Humanities Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto. Prior to Emory, she taught at the Johns Hopkins University, where she directed the Program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Learn more at www.rubylal.com

Education/Degrees

• D.Phil., Modern History, University of Oxford, England
• M.Phil., History, University of Delhi, India
• M.A., History, University of Delhi, India
• B.A., History, Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi, India

Teaching/Research Areas

• History of colonial and pre-colonial South Asia
• The Mughal Empire
• Comparative histories of the Mughal, Ottoman and Safavid Empires
• Gender history of the Islamic societies in early modern and modern world
• Feminist theory and History as it relates to the archive 

Books Published

• Royal Vagabond: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan (New Haven: Yale University Press; Forthcoming, February 2024)
• Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, A new South Asia edition (New Delhi: Permanent Black and Ashoka University, Fall 2022; Classics in Indian History series)
• In Pursuit of Playfulness: The Girl-Child/Woman and Nineteenth Century India, A New South Asia edition of Coming of Age (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2019) 
• Empress: The Astonishing Life of Nur Jahan (NY: W.W. Norton, 2018; paperback, 2020) 
• Coming of Age in Nineteenth Century India:  The Girl-Child and the Art of Playfulness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
• Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Photo credit: Diana Tyszko