Janaki Nair was Professor of History at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University until her retirement. She has also held Visiting Appointments and Fellowships at the University of California, Berkeley, USA; Columbia University, USA; University of Wuerzburg, Germany; German Historical Institute, London, UK; National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan; Azim Premji University, Bengaluru; Cambridge University, UK; and Queen’s University, Belfast.

She has authored Women and Law in Colonial India (1996, Second Revised and Updated Edition, 2025), Miners and Millhands: Work Culture and Politics in Princely Mysore (1998), The Promise of the Metropolis: Bangalore’s Twentieth Century (2005, which won the New India Foundation Book Prize) and Mysore Modern: Rethinking the Region under Princely Rule (2011/2012). She has published widely in national and international journals, and has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Women’s History and Urban History.

Janaki has served on the Board of Governors, Institute for Social and Economic Change; on the Advisory Committee of the Karnataka State Education Commission (2023-25), and has been a member of the Kerala State Urban Policy Commission (2024-25). She is also a member of the Historically Tempered Collective that produces the video series Indian History: Thali by Thali.

She can be reached at .