Most of my research focuses on the Chitradurga region of central Karnataka. I am particularly interested in questions of a military nature, especially where I feel that I can bring together contemporary documentary evidence and the archaeological record to achieve a better understanding of this part of South India between AD 1500-1850.

My most recent publication is an article on Ramdurga Fort in northeastern Chitradurga district and the Hatti family of poligars who built it. Like most small “successor states” that emerged in the post-Vijayanagara landscape of central Karnataka, the Hattis endured for only a few generations before their territory was taken by a larger neighboring polity (Chitradurga in this case).

A short history of Ramandroog in the hills above Sandur, Bellary District, is nearly finished. At various times a Hoysala hill fort, a military convalescent centre, a minor hill station for Bellary, and a German POW camp, its story needs telling.

After that, I need to return to a project that I started several years ago, but set aside for various reasons. It is a spatial analysis of castes in east-central Karnataka as they were represented in khanasumaris, or house censuses, collected by Colin Mackenzie’s staff between 1800-1801. While I undertook this analysis because I wanted to assess the validity and reliability of such tabular information from the Mackenzie Collection, I found that these documents also offer fresh insights into how castes and caste-like categories would later be handled in the early British India censuses of the late nineteenth century.