Questions & answers

Her research examines Victorian and nineteenth-century literature through the lenses of mobility studies, crime fiction, and postcolonial theory. Her doctoral thesis, From Brighton to Bombay: Mobility and the Nineteenth-Century Female Detective, for which she was awarded a PhD by the University of St Andrews in 2026, is the first study to historicise the female detective subgenre in relation to the technologies and experiences of travel from which it arose, reading British, Australian, and Bengali fiction alongside one another.

Her work reads female detective fiction from Britain, Australia, and colonial India together, arguing that the figure was not a purely metropolitan British invention but emerged simultaneously and in dialogue across the British Empire. This includes British casebook and New Woman fiction, Australian crime writing, and the Bengali Battala tradition of detective narratives.

Battala refers to the vibrant vernacular publishing scene of nineteenth-century Calcutta, centred on the upper Chitpore Road, which produced popular fiction, sensational narratives, woodcuts, and periodicals. Her research examines Bengali detective fiction from this milieu, including works by Dinendrakumar Ray and figures such as the New Woman detective Kusum. See the glossary for more terms like this.

Alongside Victorian popular and detective fiction, she works on mobility and transport studies, postcolonial and decolonial approaches to the nineteenth century, gender studies and the New Woman, the print and periodical culture of colonial Bengal, and digital humanities, as Research Lead at the platform Archēglyph. She has published on Wilkie Collins, H.D., and Ama Ata Aidoo, and has two studies of the Victorian crime novelist Fergus Hume in press.

She is a permanent Assistant Professor of English at ARSD College, University of Delhi, where she has taught since 2015. She was awarded her PhD by the School of English at the University of St Andrews in June 2026, and is Research Lead at the digital humanities platform Archēglyph.

She holds a BA (Hons), MA, and MPhil in English from the University of Delhi, and a PhD in English from the University of St Andrews (2026). She was placed first in the University of Delhi in both her BA and MA, and her MPhil thesis examined dissent in Victorian and Edwardian fantasies by women.

Her PhD was funded by a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) doctoral fellowship through the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH), from October 2022 to March 2026. Archival research in Delhi was also supported by SGSAH Engagement Funding in 2023 and a Russell Trust travel bursary in 2025. In April 2025 she was named an SGSAH Featured Researcher.

Yes. She has taught English literature in the University of Delhi system since 2010, at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, St Stephen’s College, and ARSD College. Her teaching spans Victorian and nineteenth-century literature, popular fiction and genre, postcolonial and world literature, and gender and mobility.

She welcomes enquiries from students and researchers interested in Victorian and postcolonial literature, crime fiction, mobility studies, and the history of the book. The For Students and Collaborators page outlines topics she is glad to discuss and offers notes on postgraduate study and funding.

Yes. She offers developmental feedback, proposal reading, and line editing for academic writing in Victorian studies, crime fiction, and postcolonial literature, and reads historical fiction set in Victorian Britain or colonial India. She previously worked as an Assistant Editor at Oxford University Press. See editing & manuscript consulting.

Yes, for film, television, theatre, audio drama, and novels set in Victorian and Edwardian Britain or British India, including detective-fiction conventions, travel and policing, and Bengali and Hindi names and language. See script & historical consulting.

Yes. She is open to co-authored work, grant partnerships, conference panels, archival research in India, and digital humanities projects through Archēglyph. See research collaboration.

Yes. She offers online English tuition, one-to-one or in small groups, covering academic English and writing, literature in English, spoken English, and preparation for IELTS, TOEFL, and Cambridge English exams. See online English tuition.

Empire Sleuths is a podcast from the Empires Collective, hosted by Dr Maitrayee Roychoudhury, on Victorian detective fiction, female detectives, and the colonial print cultures that carried crime writing across the nineteenth-century world. Its first episode, published on 16 September 2026, is a conversation with Vaibhav Parel of Newcastle University on diasporic crime fiction and questions of empire and nationality. It is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and the Empires Collective website, with a full transcript.

The Empires Collective is an interdisciplinary group of researchers and academics who examine the legacies of imperialism through multimedia formats, including podcasts, games, and discussion forums. She is a member of the collective and hosts its podcast, Empire Sleuths.

Yes. She has delivered conference papers, invited lectures, roundtables, and workshops in the United Kingdom and India, in person and online. See speaking & guest lectures, or send an invitation through the contact form.

The best way is the contact form on this site, or email to contact@maitrayee.me. She aims to reply within a few working days.