Her research interests include early modern England, early empire and expansion, and political culture. She began teaching in Auburn in fall 2010. She is a former holder of a Javits fellowship.
In her first book, A Business of State: Commerce, Politics, and the Birth of the East India Company (Harvard University Press, 2018), Mishra examines the Company as a political body, investigating both the internal life of the Company and its place in the wider English polity, including its relationship with crown, privy council and parliament. She is particularly interested in the nature of political engagement in the early modern period, and how the needs and requirements of early expansion challenged and transformed English political culture.
She is currently developing two projects related to early English expansion. One examines life in the early East India Company factories, exploring the difficulties of learning to live in overseas metropolitan centers faced by the small communities of English traders that conducted the East India Company’s trade abroad in the early seventeenth century. It reveals the material and cultural challenges that accompanied the developing East Indies trade. The second focuses on attempts by the Caroline regime to consolidate and coordinate English overseas activities in the 1630s.
Research Interests
- early modern England, early empire and expansion
