Biography

Brian T. Cannon is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Historical Studies and the Centre for South Asian Critical Humanities at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

He holds a joint Ph.D. in History and South Asia Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, where he most recently taught as a Lecturer in the Critical Writing Program. His research sits at the intersections of environmental history, political economy, and the study of caste and social organization in early modern and colonial North India.

His book project, Claiming Caste: Land, Water and Hierarchy in North India, c. 1660–1950, offers a revisionist history of arid-zone South Asia read through the lens of land grants in Marwar (Jodhpur) state. Across three long centuries, ownership of and access to sources of land and water persistently shaped claims to and contests over hierarchical status.

Beyond the book, his wider interests include the institutional intersections of ecology and political economy across the Indo-Pakistan border and histories of land and labor reform in the Thar Desert. His research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays program, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies.