AREAS OF EXPERTISE:
- History of Popular Music
- Global History (19th & 20th Centuries)
- Socioeconomic history (Europe & South Asia, 1970s-present; labour & migration)
- International Development
GEOGRAPHICAL REGION OF EXPERTISE:
- Western Europe (France, UK, Germany)
- South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh)
- East Asia (South Korea)
PROFILE:
Dr. Paroma Ghose is a sociocultural historian. As of September 2026, she is Co-Investigator at The MILE Project (Multilateralism: Inclusion, Legitimacy, Ecosystem) looking at the future of multilateralism through the lens of global youth and global health.
She holds a BA in History (University of Cambridge, UK), an MA in International Development and a PhD in International History and Politics, both from the Geneva Graduate Institute. Her Master’s dissertation looked at where we draw the line between hunger and famine through the case-study of Madhya Pradesh (2013), India. Her doctoral thesis looked at the notion of belonging in France (1981-2012) through the lyrics of French Rap songs, for which she earned the Pierre du Bois Prize for Current History (2020). In 2022 she was a National Research Foundation of Korea Visiting Fellow at Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea) where she began to work on her book on K-pop and postcolonialism (under contract). Between 2023 and 2026 she worked at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ Munich, Germany) as a postdoctoral researcher for the Confronting Decline Project. She was responsible for analysing histories of deindustrialization and migration in Europe through popular music since the 1970s.
Outside of academia, she has worked variously at the International Labour Organisation (Geneva) on labour conditions and human rights, at ACAPS (Geneva) on humanitarian preparedness and intervention, and with Action Against Hunger on anticipating malnutrition as part of the MERIAM project team (Geneva Graduate Institute). She has also worked as a volunteer at Swaasthya (New Delhi) on reproductive health, at the Kutumb Foundation (New Delhi) on poverty and education.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
2026 Rap Lyrics als Narrative der Deindustrialisierung in Marseille, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 2026
2025 Travelling Sounds: Tracing the Global Origins of Rhythm And Poetry, Chapter 1 in The Cambridge Companion to Global Rap (Edited Volume, Dr. R. Bramwell and Dr. Alex de Lacey) Cambridge University Press, September 2025
2024 Encounter of Asian and African Imaginaries in French Rap (1981-2012), Chapter 6 in the Collected Conference Volume from AfroAsian Musical Imaginaries: Interconnected Histories Across Continents, (Sumangala Damodaran Ed.), Tulika Books, New Delhi: 2024
2024 Book Review & Roundtable: ‘At Home in our Sounds: Music, Race and Cultural Politics in Interwar Paris’ by Dr. Rachel Gillett (Oxford University Press 2021), H-Diplo Online Roundtable, 26 February 2024
2023 Revue de 40 ans de musiques hip-hop en France (Karim Hammou et Marie Sonnette-Manouguian, Presses des Sciences Po: 2022), Revue de Musicologie, no. 109-2, automne 2023
2022 Interviewer for Utopia3 Podcast on Culture and Human Rights | 6 episodes | In collaboration with the Festival du film et forum international sur les droits humains (FIFDH), Geneva
2021 ‘Rap Speaks, But Who Listens? The Musical ‘Other’ in France’ | History Workshop Journal, History Workshop Online | Oxford University Press
2018 Le Point d’Interrogation, Blog on Swiss (French) Newspaper Le Temps (2018-2021)
2017 ‘The Hindu in Hindustan, and the Troubles of History Repeating itself’, The Wire, 15 August, 2017
2015 ‘Ebola: Reaction vs. Resolution’, Papiers d’Actualités, January/February 2015, Fondation Pierre Du Bois pour l’histoire du temps présent (2015)