Ruby Lal

Ruby Lal, born in 1968, is a historian and university teacher whose scholarship centres on pre-colonial Indian history, with a particular focus on women, power, and the Mughal court. A Professor of South Asian History at Emory University in Atlanta, she holds formal research fields in Modern History, Pre-Colonial Indian History, and Feminist History and Theory. Her four books span academic monographs published by Cambridge University Press and Yale University Press, a young adult title, and a biography of an empress that won the 2019 Georgia Author of the Year Award in the biography category.

Key facts

  • Born: 1968
  • Occupation: historian; university teacher

Education and Early Formation

Lal grew up in northern India, including in Dehradun, a city approximately 150 miles north of Delhi. It was there that her mother first told her stories of Mughal women and historical figures, encounters that shaped the questions she would spend her career pursuing.

She earned an M.A. and an M.Phil. in History from the University of Delhi before pursuing doctoral work abroad. At the University of Delhi she chose to specialize in Mughal history at a time when most students in Indian history concentrated on the colonial period, modern history, or the 1947 partition. The Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation Scholarship brought her to the University of Oxford, where she read for a D.Phil. in Modern History. That scholarship is one of two principal routes for Indian students to attend Oxford, the other being the Rhodes Scholarship.

During her doctoral research at Oxford, Lal became the first scholar to work closely with Princess Gulbadan’s rarely consulted memoir. The encounter set the direction of her subsequent career.

Academic Career

Before joining Emory University, Lal taught at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in History and Anthropology, and served as Associate Director of the Program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.

At Emory she holds a position as Professor of South Asian History in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies. Her courses there include “Powerful Women in Global History” and “India’s Women: Leadership, Power and History.” In February 2025, she delivered the John F. Morgan, Sr. Distinguished Faculty Lecture at Emory University, speaking on the theme “Who Decides What History Is?”

Books and Scholarship

Lal’s first book, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2005 as part of the Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization series. It received more than fifteen reviews in major international journals, including The New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement. The book challenges the orientalist image of the Mughal harem by examining its role across the reigns of three emperors — Babur, Humayun, and Akbar — covering the period 1487 to 1605 C.E.

Her fourth book, Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan, was published by Yale University Press on February 27, 2024. It is the first biography of Mughal Princess Gulbadan. Vagabond Princess was a finalist for the 2025 Georgia Author of the Year Award in the biography category.

Tiger Slayer: The Extraordinary Story of Nur Jahan, Empress of India, an illustrated young adult adaptation of her earlier Empress, features watercolor illustrations by New York-based artist Molly Crabapple and was published by Norton Young Readers in August 2025. It was selected as a Junior Library Guild of America Gold Standard 2025 selection, ranked among the top two picks of the New York Public Library’s 2025 nonfiction YA selection, and was shortlisted for the Atta Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Prize.

Empress and the Georgia Author of the Year

Lal’s book Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan won the 2019 Georgia Author of the Year Award in the biography category. The award was presented at the 55th annual awards ceremony, held on June 15, 2019.

Public Writing and Speaking

Beyond her academic output, Lal’s writing has appeared in Time magazine, BBC History, and Literary Hub. She speaks regularly at national and international literary festivals, book clubs, and radio programs.

Did you know

  • Growing up in a Hindu household in Dehradun, India, Lal first encountered the Muslim empress Nur Jahan through her mother’s stories. Her mother called the empress “Maharani,” meaning “Queen of Queens” in Hindi, and Lal has credited that childhood introduction as the seed of her entire career. (csmonitor.com)
  • At the University of Delhi, Lal chose to specialize in Mughal history at a time when the vast majority of Indian history students focused on modern history, the colonial period, or the 1947 partition, making her an outlier in her cohort. (news.emory.edu)
  • Tiger Slayer, Lal’s young adult book about Nur Jahan published in August 2025, was among the top two picks of the New York Public Library’s 2025 nonfiction YA selection and was also shortlisted for the Atta Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Prize. (newsbreak.com)
  • Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, Lal’s debut academic book, challenges the orientalist image of the Mughal harem by examining its role across the reigns of three emperors — Babur, Humayun, and Akbar — spanning the period 1487 to 1605 C.E. (proquest.com)
  • The Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation Scholarship that funded Lal’s Oxford doctoral studies is one of the two main routes for gifted Indian students to attend Oxford, the other being the Rhodes Scholarship. (news.emory.edu)

Data sources

Data updated: 2026-10-30