Vinita is Senior Lecturer in South Asian History at the University of Sussex, interested in sustainable development dialogues in the global South. Her work ranges from the social and political history of Bihar to the environmental history of South Asia, including using historical records to understand climate change in the Indian Ocean World. Her publications include: Broken Promises, Indian Nationalism and the Congress Party in Bihar (1992), Nature and the Orient, Essays on the Environmental History of South and South-East Asia (1998), Post Colonial India, History Politics and Culture (2000), British empire and the natural world: environmental encounters in South Asia (2010), East India Company and the Natural world (2014). She is the director of the Centre for World Environmental History at Sussex, and has recently led an AHRC network project on the botanical and meteorological history of the Indian Ocean.