Sadiah Qureshi

Professor Qureshi is a writer and historian who joined the University of Manchester in 2023 to take up a Chair in Modern British History. You can email her by adding ‘sadiah.qureshi’ to ‘@manchester.ac.uk’.

She studied at the University of Cambridge for her undergraduate, postgraduate, and postdoctoral studies. She read natural sciences before specialising in the history and philosophy of science.

She has written for the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and New Statesman. 

RESEARCH

At the broadest level, Professor Qureshi is a historian of race, science, and empire. Her research explores how racialised knowledge has been produced, circulated, and mobilised in the modern world to create hierarchies of value for life on earth. Her research traces the lasting legacies of these ideas and practices for a variety of present-day political issues, from antiracism to land rights, and conservation, in the present.

Extinction and Empire

Her latest book, Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction, was published by Allen Lane/Penguin Press on World Environment Day 2025. You can watch her in conversation with David Olusoga for the book launch at Manchester Museum. 

The Financial Times and Telegraph picked Vanished as one of their best book of 2025. The Royal Society shortlisted the book for its 2025 Trivedi Science Book Prize, and recognised the book with the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar medal. Vanished has also been postively reviewed by the Financial Times, Guardian, Forbes, Times Literary Supplement, and London Review of Books.

Drawing on histories of science, race, genocide, empire, conservation, animals, and museums, and case studies from America to Australia, the book explores how the very notion of extinction emerged, and shaped our understanding of life on earth in the Anthropocene. 

Race and Anthropology

Her previous book, Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire and Anthrpology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2011), is a prize-winning, landmark survey of the commercial exhibition of displayed peoples in nineteenth-century Britain. It explored the importance of these shows for intercultural encounter, theories of racial difference, and the development of anthropology as a discipline.

Based on this research, she was a historical advisor for a recent documentary about displayed peoples for Channel 4 presented by the Booker Prize nominated writer Nadifa Mohamed.

Black and South Asian Histories of Britain

Her current research explores the everyday lives of South Asians in Modern Britain. This project will draw on her longstanding interests in researching, teaching, and advocating for curriculum reform in relationship to Black and South Asian British histories. The project will have multiple threads, from public facing events and new oral histories, to published papers and a book.

The early stages of the project were supported by a pilot grant from the John Rylands Research Institute and Library. The project will involve close collaboration with the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre, one of Britain's leading organizations dedicated to the study of race and migration, with a particular focus on antiracism and social justice. She also serves as a trustee for the AIU Race Centre.

TEACHING

Professor Qureshi's teaching encompasses a broad range of modern history at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She currently teaches dedicated modules on histories of extinction and Black and South Asian histories of Britain. She also supervises a wide range of dissertation topics on Black and South Asian histories, race and migration, science and empire, animal studies, gender and sexuality including Black feminism and queer histories, and cultural histories of modern Britain.

Professor Qureshi also supervises PhD students. She is most likely to supervise students interested in collecting, museums, race, extinction, environmental histories, and Black and South Asian histories of Britain. If you're contacting her about possible PhD supervision, please email with a CV and proposal of up to 2 pages. Please note that she does not supervise students in South Asian, African, or Middle Eastern histories more broadly, as this requires specialist regional expertise for which her colleagues are better suited.

PRIZES and GRANTS

Professor Qureshi has won a number of prizes and grants.

In 2025, the Royal Society awarded her the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal and Lecture for her 'distinguished and internationally-recognised specialism in subjects related to science, race and empire, and the recent timely publication on extinction in the natural world as a relatively modern concept'.

In 2023, she was a Sassoon Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. You can learn more about her research during this fellowship from this film courtesy of the Bodleian Libraries.

In 2020, she was awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship to support her research on extinction. You can learn more about the research from this fellowship on the British Academy's website.

In 2013, the Northeast Victorian Studies Association jointly awarded her book, Peoples on Parade, the Sonya Rudikoff Prize for the best first book in Victorian Studies published in 2011.

In 2012, she was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize by the Leverhulme Trust. You can watch her reflecting on the importance of her prize, and the research it enabled, in this short film of past winners. 

PUBLIC HISTORY, HERITAGE, and POLICY

Professor Qureshi's research, teaching, and leadership is deeply rooted in, and informed by, public engagement, widening participation, and policy work within higher education.

These interests draw on her historical expertise; experiences of growing up in several economically deprived areas of Birmingham; being one of very few students from her school to attend the University of Cambridge; being a first-generation academic, and one of the few professors of her heritage, especially women, in British higher education. At the Univeristy of Cambridge, she spent over a decade involved in initiatives such as summer schools and school visits for widening participation. 

Below is a small selection of such activities.

Talks and Podcasts

Professor Qureshi often discusses her research in talks and podcasts. Her most recent podcasts were for BBC History Extra and Green Dreamer. You can also listen to her discussing extinction for the British Academy’s Why History? Vanished: Extinction Past and Present lecture, and ONCA’s Lost Species Day 2020 events.

You can also listen to her contributions to Bonnie Greer’s In Search of Black History, Stephen Fry’s Victorian Secrets, Marc Fennell’s Stuff the British Stole for ABC Radio National, and Sushma Jansari’s The Wonder House podcast.

You can watch her chairing a discussion on the shifting ways public historians have used television to narrate our pasts with Ana Carden-Coyne, David Olusoga, and Michael Wood for the University of Manchester's bicentenary celebrations in 2024.

She has given talks across the world, including Princeton University, Yale University, University of Oxford, the Max Planck Institute (Berlin), Quai Branly (Paris), National Portrait Gallery (London), the inaugural HistFest, and the Presidential Address, History of Science, British Science Festival (2022).

Policy Reports

Between 2019 and 2021, she was a member of the Museum Association’s Decolonisation Guidance Working Group. As a member of the group, she contributed to the Museum Association’s Supporting Decolonisation in Museums 2021 report, which provides sector wide guidance.

From 2019 to 2022, she co-chaired the Royal Historical Society’s Race, Ethnicity & Equality Working Group, with Jonathan Saha, after serving as a member from the group’s foundation in 2017 until its disbandment by the RHS in 2022. In 2018, the Working Group co-authored a landmark report on racial inequalities within history as a discipline and UK higher education. You can read more about the substantial impact of the report on the Royal Historical Society’s website.

Editorial, Advisory, Grants, and Prizes

Among other commitments, she serves history subpanel for REF 2029, is on the Advisory Council of the Institute of Historical Research, London, and is a member of the History Workshop Journal editorial collective. She previously served on the Editorial Board for the English Historical Review.

She frequently contributes to funding panels and grant reviews. Most recently this includes the British Academy and Wellcome Trust. She previously served on the AHRC Peer Review College and Council for the British Society for the History of Science. In this capacity, she served as a judge for the Hughes Prize and Pickstone Prize. She also judged the inaugural Olivette Otele Prize, awarded by Institute for Historical Research in 2021, in honour of Professor Olivette Otele.

Nature + Love, Horniman Museum, London

The Horniman Museum is currently undergoing a major redevelopment of its natural history galleries before its scheduled reopening in 2026. Professor Qureshi served as a critical friend during development to advise on displaying histories of extinction. 

Flux: Parian Unpacked, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

In 2017, she advised on an exhibition of Victorian Parian ware curated by Matt Smith and held at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and wrote an essay for the exhibition catalogue. You can watch her chairing a discussion between the artist Hew Locke and curator Matt Smith on Commemorating and Contesting Empire with Victorian Ceramics.

Our Migration Story and the History Curriculum 

Launched in 2016, this prize-winning website is a major resource supporting GCSE students studying the history of migration to the UK. It was sponsored by the Runnymede Trust. She contributed an article on Exhibiting Foreigners: The Case of Performing ‘Prince’ Lobengula.

George Catlin: American Indian Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London

Between 2012 and 2013, she led a project with the National Portrait Gallery on George Catlin. A group of her students produced online content for the website and gave gallery talks in conjunction with the exhibition.