Maureen McCord is an historian exploring the global early modern British empire, European imperialism in South Asia, and comparative empires and imperialisms. Her ongoing work on the East India Company’s administration of 17th and 18th Century Bombay (Mumbai) demonstrates Bombay’s importance as an alternative site of imperial development and expansion for the English/British in South Asia compared to other imperial sites on the subcontinent like Bengal. The capital- and labor-intensive infrastructural investment and imperial administration which the East India Company developed in Bombay survived and thrived throughout the early modern period. In so doing, it showed the possibility for success with a commercial, developmental imperial state project even as the rest of the British empire in South Asia grew increasingly extractive, territorial, and militarized.

McCord completed a PhD in History at the University of Chicago in 2026 and my BA in Anthropology and History from Wellesley College in 2018. She teaches in the Department of History as well as in two Civilization Core sequences: Energy in World Civilizations and Western Civilizations. When not thinking big history thoughts alongside my students, she likes to watch baseball with my husband Pratik, work on knitting and spinning projects, and play with my cat, Gupshup.