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Prachi Deshpande is Associate Professor of History at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC). She has an MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and a PhD from Tufts University, Medford. Her research interests are in the social and cultural history of historiography, language, and regional identities, especially over the transition from the early modern into the colonial eras in the Indian subcontinent. She is the author of Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700–1960 (Columbia University Press/ Permanent Black, 2007). This book examined the emergence of modern history-writing practices in the Marathi-speaking areas of western India, and the importance of historical memory in shaping an enduring Marathi/ Maharashtrian regional identity. She has published on the history of Marathi scripts and scribal practices, and is currently completing a book project on the cultural history of Marathi language practices across the early modern and the colonial modern eras. At the CSSSC, Deshpande teaches modules in courses on historiography, research methods, and academic writing. Before joining CSSSC in 2010, Prachi was Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.