Anne Murphy is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Chair of Punjabi Language, Literature and Sikh Studies. She is a cultural and intellectual historian whose work focuses on the Punjab region of India and Pakistan, with interests in language and literary cultures, the history of the Punjabi language in South Asia and beyond, religious community formations in the early modern and modern periods (with special but not exclusive attention to the Sikh tradition), oral history, commemoration, historiography, the history of ideas, and material culture studies. Temporally, her work focuses on the early modern to the modern period, and modern literary production and memorial practices; her current research concerns modern Punjabi literature in the Indian and Pakistani Punjabs and in the broader Punjabi Diaspora, and the early modern history of Punjabi’s emergence as a literary language. Her monograph, The Materiality of the Past: History and Representation in Sikh Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2012), explored the idea of “history” in Sikh tradition, tracing the shape of Sikh historiographical practices in textual forms and in relation to material culture and religious sites from the eighteenth century to the present. She edited a thematically related volume entitled Time, History and the Religious Imaginary in South Asia (Routledge, 2011), and has pursued her continuing interests in commemoration and memorial practices in a volume entitled Partition and the Practice of Memory (Palgrave, 2018), co-edited with Churnjeet Mahn (Strathclyde University). Dr. Murphy teaches classes in the Department of History on the history of South Asia in the early modern and modern periods, the Sikh tradition, and oral history.

Dr. Murphy’s most recent book publication is a collection of essays she co-edited with Dr. Anshu Malhotra (University of California, Santa Barbara) entitled Bhai Vir Singh (1872-1957): Religious and literary modernities in Colonial and Postcolonial Indian Punjab (Routledge 2023). Dr. Murphy has published articles in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, History and Theory, Studies in Canadian Literature, South Asian History and Culture, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, and other journals, and has been editor or co-editor of four special journal issues, with two additional special journal issues forthcoming in Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies that she is co-editing with Anne Castaing (CESAH/CNRS) that is due out in July and December 2025. She has engaged in numerous Public Humanities and Humanities/Arts integration projects over the last decade (see below under “Research”).

Dr. Murphy’s current book project explores the political imaginaries expressed in the Punjabi language in the closing decade of colonial rule and opening decades of the postcolonial period in India and Pakistan, for which she received major funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council from 2013-2015, extended to 2016, and 2017-22 (continued to 2023). She is also conducting research on the early modern history of the Punjabi langauge, for which she is completing a book-length translation of the eighteenth-century Sufi text Hīr by Waris Shah; she received major Insight Grant funding (2024-2029) in support of this project in collaboration with Dr. Julie Vig (York University) and Jvala Singh (University of California at Berkeley), Dr. Murphy has also recently engaged in two major oral history projects in recent years: the “Punjabi in BC” research project with collaborators Sukhwant Hundal and Lovneet Aujla, which involved numerous UBC undergraduates and recent graduates in hands-on research, and the “Caste in Canada” project with co-Primary Investigator Dr. Suraj Yengde and the Chetna Association of Canada, an anti-caste community organization. The results of both project were released online in 2023. The Caste in Canada project continues from 2024-2026 with additional funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through a Partnership Development Grant, to enable further documentation and dissemination of the history of caste in Canada through archival research and oral history work. These oral history projects represent the continuation of the Punjabi Studies oral history program that Dr. Murphy initiated in 2010 (see http://blogs.ubc.ca/annemurphy/oral-history/intro/). She is currently a member of the Narratives group of the Centre for Migration Studies.

Dr. Murphy was founder (in 2019) and Founding Lead (2019-2021) of the Interdisciplinary Histories Research Cluster at UBC, and then acted as Associate Lead (2021-22) with Lead Dr. Hallie Marshall (UBC Department of Theatre and Film) before the closing of the Cluster in 2022. (For more about the Cluster and its work, see: https://histories-cluster.ubc.ca/). She served as Director of the Centre for India and South Asia Research in the Institute of Asian Research/School for Public Policy and Global Affairs from 1 July 2019 to 31 August 2020, and Co-Director from 2017-2019, and Associate Dean in the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (2018-2020).  She was elected to the UBC Senate, representing the Joint Faculties, from 2017-2020. She served until June 30, 2019 as Chair (2016-18) and then co-Chair (2018-19) of the “Religion, Literature and the Arts” Interdisciplinary Program, and then as a Faculty Advisor in the Religious Studies program, and served as a faculty advisor in the “Asian Candian and Asian Migration Studies” program from 2014-2020. She helped to found the Canadian South Asian Studies Association, and most recently served on its Steering & Program Committee in 2023-24.

See: http://blogs.ubc.ca/annemurphy/, https://annemurphy.academia.edu/

Books

Co-editor: Bhai Vir Singh (1872-1957): Religious and literary modernities in Colonial and Postcolonial Indian Punjab, co-edited with Anshu Malhotra, University of California, Santa Barbara. New York: Routledge, Critical Sikh Studies Series, 2023.

Co-authored/Co-edited: Dūje Pāse toṅ (“From the other Side”): Arts Across the Border, from the two Punjabs. Exhibition catalog, for exhibition at The Reach Gallery Museum, Abbotsford, BC, 28 May to September 7, 2021. Published by The Reach Gallery Museum, 2023. See corresponding website at: https://dujepaseton.com/

Translator: Grieving for Pigeons: Stories of Lahore by Zubair Ahmed, translated by Anne Murphy. Book-length translation of the Punjabi language short stories of Lahore-based author Zubair Ahmed. Athabasca University Press, 2022 (open access).

Co-editor:Partition and the Practice of Memory. Co-edited with Churnjeet Mahn (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland). Palgrave UK, 2018.

Author: The Materiality of the Past: History and Representation in Sikh Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

Editor: Time, History, and the Religious Imaginary in South Asia (Routledge, 2011). Includes work by: Aparna Balachandran (Delhi University), Varuni Bhatia (Michigan), Nicolas Dejenne (Sorbonne), Purnima Dhavan (University of Washington), James Hare (Columbia University), James Hegarty (Cardiff), Rajeev Kinra (Northwestern), Arvind-pal Singh Mandair (Michigan), Rastin Mehri (SOAS), Christian Novetzke (University of Washington), and Teena Purohit (Boston University), as well as my introductory essay.

Journal Special Issue Editor

Co-editor, with Philipp Zehmisch (University of Heidelberg) of a special issue of the Journal of Asian Ethnology, “Rethinking Regions: Locality and Circulation in South Asia.” 83, 1 (2024). Open Access. https://asianethnology.org/volume/83-1

Co-editor of a special issue of Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory with Anshu Malhotra (University of California, Santa Barbara) entitled Bhai Vir Singh (1872-1957): Rethinking Literary Modernity in Colonial Punjab, 16 (2020): 1-2 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2019.1674513).

Co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 28, 3 (2018) with Heidi Pauwels (University of Washington) entitled “From Outside the Persianate Center: Vernacular Views on Ālamgīr.” Contributors: Emilia Bachrach (Oberlin College), Véronique Bouillier (EHESS, Paris), Allison Busch (Columbia), Monika Horstmann (Heidelberg), Samira Sheikh (Vanderbilt), Cynthia Talbot (UT Austin), and the editors.

Editor for special issue of Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 3, 2 (December 2007) 93-209 for issue, 93-109 for my introductory essay; topic: “Time and history in South Asian Pasts.” Contributors include: Purnima Dhavan (Washington), James Hare (Columbia University), Rajeev Kinra (Northwestern), Christian Novetzke (Washington), and Teena Purohit (Boston University). Essays from this issue were included, with the addition of others, in Time, History, and the Religious Imaginary in South Asia (see above).

Selected Journal Articles and Book Chapters:

“Locating a Punjabi classic: Regional and Linguistic Affinities in Waris Shāh’s Hīr (18th c.),” for special issue “Rethinking Regions: Locality and Circulation in South Asia,” co-edited by myself and Philipp Zehmisch (University of Heidelberg). Journal of Asian Ethnology 83, 1 (2024): 87-102. Open Access.

“Rethinking Regions: Locality and Circulation in South Asia,” co-authored with Philipp Zehmisch, introduction to special issue “Rethinking Regions: Locality and Circulation in South Asia,” co-edited by myself and Philipp Zehmisch (University of Heidelberg). Journal of Asian Ethnology 83, 1 (2024): 3-15. Open Access.

“Progressive politics, gender & the Punjabi literary through the work of Dalip Kaur Tiwana,” in Punjabi Centuries, edited by Anshu Malhotra, 149-186. Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 2024.

“Dead Man’s Float,” short story published in Grieving for Pigeons (2022), republished by Read Alberta, of the Book Publishers Association of Alberta, April 22, 2024. https://readalberta.ca/articles/sunday-shorts-grieving-for-pigeons/

“Waliullah Is Lost,” translation by Anne Murphy of a story of Zubair Ahmad, excerpted from Grieving for Pigeons (2022), listed above, reprinted on Vancouver-based Rungh online magazine, May 2023: https://rungh.org/volume-10-number-1/ [Accessed 23 May 2023].

“The Possibility of the Secular: Sikh Engagements with Modern Punjabi Literature,” in The Sikh World, edited by Arvind Mandair and Pashaura Singh. July 2023. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429455322

“War Outside the State: Religious Communities, Martiality, and State Formation in Early Modern South Asia” in The Cambridge Companion on Religion and War, edited by Margo Kitts (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108884075

“Introduction,” co-authored with co-editor Anshu Malhotra, in Bhai Vir Singh (1872-1957): Religious and literary modernities in Colonial and Postcolonial Indian Punjab, co-edited by Anne Murphy and Anshu Malhotra, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1-24. New York: Routledge, Critical Sikh Studies Series, 2023.

“Beyond the Past: Poetry as a Notation of the Present” in Bhai Vir Singh (1872-1957): Religious and literary modernities in Colonial and Postcolonial Indian Punjab, co-edited with Anshu Malhotra, University of California, Santa Barbara, 119-134. New York: Routledge, Critical Sikh Studies Series, 2023.

“The emergence of the social in service of the Guru,” in Religious Authority in South Asia: Generating the Guru, edited by István Keul (University of Bergen) and Srilata Raman (Toronto), 84-106. London/New York: Routledge, 2022.

“Which urbanity? Secondary urban centres and their attendant religious formations,” Religion and Urbanity Online, Jörg Rüpke and Susanne Rau, eds. (Max Weber Kolleg, Universität Erfurt, Germany). De Gruyter, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/urbrel.11327907 Open Access.

“Remembering Against Sentimentality: Partition’s Literary Shadows in the work of Najm Hosain Syed (b. 1936)” for special issue of the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, edited by Kamran Asdar Ali (University of Texas, Austin Texas, USA), Om Dwivedi (Auro University in Surat, India) and Tabish Khair (Aarhus University, Denmark). 57, 3 (2022): 501-519. https://doi.org/10.1177/00219894221115907

“Modern Punjabi literature and the Spectre of Sectarian Histories” for special issue of the Cracow Indological Studies journal, vol. 23: History and Other Engagements with the Past in Modern South Asian Writing/s, co-edited by Piotr Borek and Monika Browarczyk. Vol. XXIII, 2 (2021): 91–118. Open Access. https://doi.org/ 10.12797/CIS.23.2021.02.04 

“Sikhism.” In The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion (eds C. Taliaferro and S. Goetz). Wiley, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119009924.eopr0367

“The Territorialization of Sikh Pasts.” In Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions, edited by Knut Jacobsen, 205-221. Routledge, 2021. Open Access.

“Ghair-Puṅjābaṇ” (“Non-Punjabi”), Bārāṅ Māṅ, Literary journal published in Lahore, Pakistan (Vol 2, 2020): 163-171. In Punjabi.

Introduction with Anshu Malhotra, to co-edited special journal issue of Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory entitled Bhai Vir Singh (1872-1957): Rethinking Literary Modernity in Colonial Punjab, , 16: 1-2, 1-13 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2019.1674513). Pre-publication, final full-text: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74585

“Encountering Difference and Identity in South Asian Religions” in Encountering the Other, edited by Laura Duhan Kaplan and Harry Maier, 39-48. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2020.

“Sufis, Jogis, and the question of religious difference: Individualization in early modern Punjab through Waris Shah’s Hīr” in Religious Individualisations: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, editors Martin Fuchs, Antje Linkenbach, Martin Mulsow, Bernd-Christian Otto, Rahul Parson and Jörg Rüpke, 289-314. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020. Open Access. https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/498381?rskey=qmtzPy&result=1 or ttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110580853). (Or, through cIRcle: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74586)

“La remémoration d’une présence perdue : le spectre de la Partition dans les nouvelles de Zubair Ahmed, auteur lahori de langue panjabi” in Raconter La Partition: Litterature, Cinema, Arts Plastiques (Telling the Partition: Literature, Cinema, Arts) edited by Anne Castaing, 63-96. Bruxelles: Peter Lang, 2019. Translation of an expanded version of “Remembering a lost presence: The specter of Partition in the stories of Lahore-based Punjabi-language author Zubair Ahmed,” in Partition and the Practice of Memory (2018) (see below).

“Punjabi in the (late) Vernacular Millennium” in Early Modern India: literature and images, texts and languages, edited by Maya Burger & Nadia Cattoni, 305-328. Heidelberg, Berlin: CrossAsia-eBooks, 2019. Open Access. https://crossasia-books.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/xasia/reader/download/387/387-43-84778-1-10-20190502.pdf

“Configuring community in colonial and pre-colonial imaginaries: Insights from the Khalsa Darbar records,” in Religious Interactions in Modern India, Martin Fuchs and Vasudha Dalmia, eds, 165-187. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019.

“At a Sufi-Bhakti Crossroads: Gender and the politics of satire in early modern Punjabi Sufi literature,” in Archiv orientální (Journal of African and Asian Studies) 86 (2018): 243-268. Open Access.  http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74587

“Thinking beyond Aurangzeb and the Mughal State in a late 18th century Punjabi Braj source.” In the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 28, 3 (2018): 537-554. (Part of special issue edited by myself and Heidi Pauwels.)

“From Outside the Persianate Centre: Vernacular Views on “Ālamgīr,” with Heidi Pauwels (University of Washington), introduction to special issue in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 28, 3 (2018): 409-414.

“Writing Punjabi Across Borders,” in South Asian History and Culture. 9, 1 (2018): 68-91.

“Remembering a lost presence: The specter of Partition in the stories of Lahore-based Punjabi-language author Zubair Ahmed.” In Partition and the Practice of Memory, 231-254. London: Palgrave, 2018.

(Co-author.) “A future from the past” by the South Asian Canadian Histories Association Founding Collective (Naveen Girn, Anne Murphy, Raghavendra Rao K.V., Milan Singh, Paneet Singh), in Reflections of Canada: Illuminating our Biggest Possibilities and Challenges at 150+ Years, edited by Phillip Tortell and Margot Young, 151-160. Vancouver: Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, 2017.

“The Utility of ‘South Asia'” In South Asian Review 38, 3 (2017): 91-98.

“Placing Max Arthur Macauliffe in context(s): Sikh historiographical traditions and colonial forms of knowledge,” for special issue of the Journal of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions, 4 (2017): 58-73.https://jisasr.org/current-issue-volume-4-2017/  (Or cIRcle: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74588)

“Bajwa has nothing more to say.” Translation of a short story by Lahore-based Punjabi writer Zubair Ahmed, with Mr. Ahmed. In Pakistani Literature (Journal of the Pakistan Academy of Letters). 18, 1 (2015): 86-93.

“A Millennial Sovereignty? Recent Works on Sikh Martial and Political Cultures in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” A review article of When Sparrows Became Hawks: The Making of the Sikh Warrior Tradition, 1699–1799 by Purnima Dhavan; The Sikh Zafar-namah of Guru Gobind Singh: A Discursive Blade in the Heart of the Mughal Empire by Louis Fenech; Debating the Dasam Granth by Robin Rinehart; Sikh Militancy in the Seventeenth Century: Religious Violence in Mughal and Early Modern India by Hardip Singh Syan. In History of Religions, 55, 1 (August 2015): 89-104.

“Performing the Komagata Maru: Theatre and the Work of Memory.” In Studies in Canadian Literature 40, 1 (2015): 45-73.

“Dead Man’s Float.” Translation of a short story by Lahore-based Punjabi writer Zubair Ahmed, with Mr. Ahmed. In South Asian Ensemble: A Canadian Quarterly of Literature, Arts & Culture 7, 1 & 2 (Winter/Spring 2015): 158-165.

“The formation of the ethical Sikh subject in the era of British colonial reform,” revised and expanded version of essay published in 2013 conference proceedings (below). In Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 11, 1 (2015): 149-159.

“Sikh Museuming.” In Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces: Exhibiting Asian Religions in Museums, edited by Bruce Sullivan (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 49-64, 157.

“The uses of the ‘folk’: Cultural Historical Practice and the Modernity of the Guga Tradition.” In South Asian History and Culture 6, 4 (July 2015): 441-461. Reprinted as “Uses of the Folk: cultural historical practice and the Guga tradition” in Cultural Studies in India edited by Rana Nayar, Pushpinder Syal and Akhsaya Kumar, 117-138. New York: Routledge, 2016.

“A Diasporic Temporality: New narrative writing from Punjabi-Canada.” In Towards a Diasporic Imagination of the Present: An eternal sense of homelessness, edited by Tapati Bharadwaja, 9-30. Bangalore: Lies and Big Feet Press, 2015.

“Dissent and Diversity in South Asia Religions.” In The Management of Intramural Dissent on Core Beliefs (Cambridge Univ. Press), edited by Simone Chambers & Peter Nosco, 158-185. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

“The formation of the ethical Sikh subject in the era of British colonial reform,” in Conference Proceedings for `The Making of Modern Punjab: Education, Science and Social Change in Punjab c. 1850-c. 2000’, Panjab University (Chandigarh), October 24-26, 2013, pgs. 69-81.

“Defining the Religious and the Political: The Administration of Sikh Religious Sites in Colonial India and the Making of a Public Sphere.” For special issue on “Sikhs in Public Space” in Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory. 9, 1 (2013): 51-62.

“The gurbilas literature and the idea of ‘religion’.” In Punjab Reconsidered: History, Culture, and Practice, edited by Anshu Malhotra and Farina Mir, 93-115. New York and New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012.

“March 1849, Lahore.” Short essay commissioned for “Beyond Britain” Forum in The Victorian Review 36, 1 (2010): 21-26.

“Objects, ethics, and the gendering of Sikh memory.” In Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4 (2009): 161-168. Part of an interdisciplinary forum on “Early Modern Women and Material Culture.”

“The Guru’s Weapons.” In The Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77, 2 (June 2009): 1-30.

“Modern Punjabi Literature in Vancouver: A Portrait.”  In Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 4, 2 (December 2008): 157-175.

“History in the Sikh Past.” In History and Theory 46, 2 (October 2007): 345-365.

“Materializing Sikh Pasts.” In Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 1, 2 (December 2005): 175-200.

“Mobilizing seva (Service): Modes of Sikh diasporic action.” In South Asians in the Diaspora: Histories and Religious Traditions, 337-372, edited by Knut Axel Jacobsen and Pratap Kumar, 367-402 in online version. Leiden: Brill, 2004.

Translations of selected poems of the 15^th century saint Ravidas. In Untouchable Saints: An Indian Phenomenon, 197-200, edited by Eleanor Zelliot and Rohini Mokashi-Punekar. Delhi: Manohar, 2004.

Dr. Murphy received the UBC Dean of Arts Research Award in W2017, and was a Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC in 2016-7; a Visiting Fellow at the Max-Weber-Kolleg Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the Universität Erfurt, Germany from May to July 2017 and April to July and October to December 2022; and Directeur d’Études Associé (Associate Director) of L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris in June 2019. She was Visiting Faculty at Delhi University in February 2015 and at University of Punjab, Lahore in December 2019. She received an Award of Honour for her work on the “Caste in Canada” project from the Steering Committee for the Dr. Ambedkar International Symposium on Emancipation and Equality Day Celebrations in April 2023.