Priyamvada Gopal is a Reader in Postcolonial and Related Literature, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, as well as a Fellow of Churchill College. She has written extensively on colonial and postcolonial literature and theory, including Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence (2005), The Indian English Novel: Nation, History and Narration (2009), and After Iraq: Reframing Postcolonial Studies (a special issue of New Formations co-edited with Neil Lazarus, 2006). In her new book, Insurgent Empire, Dr. Gopal shows how rebellious colonies changed British attitudes to the empire. Contrary to current criticism that reads colonized people as victims and passive beneficiaries of enlightened British consciousness, she argues that not only were these people active agents in their own liberation, the legacies of their resistance shaped ideas of freedom and emancipation back in the United Kingdom.