Professor Nandini Das – photo Fran Monks

Award-winning author Professor Nandini Das OBE (1997, English) will be discussing her latest book, This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart England (Bloomsbury, 2026), at the V&A South Kensington on Thursday 28 May.

The book presents a major reappraisal of early modern England as a society shaped by movement, encounter, and exchange. Drawing on extensive archival research, Professor Das reconstructs the period through the lives of merchants, migrants, travellers, writers, artists, and envoys, revealing a polity that is far less insular than its familiar literary and historical self-image might suggest.

By reframing England’s story within a wider world, Professor Das challenges readers to reconsider some of their most fundamental ideas about nationhood, about identity, and above all, about belonging. During the event, Professor Das will be in conversation with Alex von Tunzelmann, an internationally bestselling and Wolfson Prize shortlisted historian.

Professor Das is Professor of Early Modern English Literature and Culture and a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Her work focuses on literature, travel, and cross-cultural encounter in the early modern world. Among her books are Renaissance Romance: The Transformation of English Prose Fiction, 1570-1620 (2011) and The Cambridge History of Travel Writing (2019), co-edited with Tim Youngs. Her most recent book on the first English embassy to India 1614-1619, Courting India: England, Mughal India, and the Origins of Empire, was the Spectator, Prospect, and History Today Book of the Year in 2023, longlisted for the Cundhill Prize, shortlisted for the Duff Cooper and Wolfson History Prizes, and received the 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. In 2025, Professor Das was awarded an OBE for services to Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities and to Public Engagement.

You can find out more about the event and book tickets here.

Published: 20 May 2026

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