Short answers, pulled from the story.
Rana Mitter is a British historian and political scientist of Indian Bengali heritage who specialises in modern Chinese history. He holds the ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and previously served as Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford.
Mitter's 2013 book examines the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945. Published in the UK as China's War with Japan, 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival and in the US as Forgotten Ally: China's War with Japan, 1937-45, the book was well received by critics.
Mitter was elected a Fellow of the British Academy on the 16th of July 2015. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to education. Early in his career he also held a Kennedy Scholarship at Harvard University.
Mitter studied at Lancing College and then King's College, Cambridge, where he earned a BA in 1992, an MPhil in 1993, and a PhD in 1996. In 1991 he was elected President of the Cambridge Union.
Mitter is a regular presenter for Night Waves, now known as Free Thinking, on BBC Radio. He has also published op-eds in The Guardian on contemporary China politics and wrote for Foreign Affairs in 2024.
Mitter's father, Partha Mitter, taught art history at the University of Sussex. His mother, Swasti Mitter, was a professor of gender and technology at the University of Brighton. Both parents were academics.