 I'd like to welcome Anupana Mukherjee, Anupana is from the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences and the title of her three-minute thesis tonight is Empires of Nostalgia. Nostalgia. The term immediately evokes a fuzzy feeling in our tummies. It takes us on a time travel to the days we loved and lost, homes that are no more, or the fields out there on which stands our auditorium today, gone forever. Indeed, nostalgia is one of the most persistent windows through which we see our yesterdays. And yet, it is most widely panned for soggy sentimentality that muddles our perception of history. This led me to the question, what is Nostalgia's relation to history then? History is a frame that holds a big picture, where is nostalgia whispered to us in soft voices, speaking to an absence or a loss in the present, with images from the past, imagination, desire and memory team up in nostalgia to give us the most perfect photoshopped picture of an imperfect world. So nostalgia is powerful because it gives us a blueprint of a beautiful world, but at the same time it can hold us prisoners of memory. My research shows how nostalgia passes from a personal sentiment to a tool for empire builders. Think of Sydney, Melbourne, Calcutta, all the little London's that the homesick travellers created in far-off lands which they treated as blank canvases to paint the images of their absent homes. From replicating English domestic scenes with lilies and lilacs in the garden, to using British place names, warrics and victorious, by responding to various nostalgias, the colonisers gradually extended their control over the colonies. So by the end of 19th century, we had many Englans scattered all across the globe like pieces of Chicks and Puzzle. Reading poems and texts of the colonial era, I show nostalgia's role in building colonies extending empire, because nostalgia is a weapon, perhaps more effective than wars of conquest. So by looking at the humdrum everyday longing and the role in shaping larger political events, my research illuminates how nostalgia for the past shape habitations of the future. Nostalgia is more than a fuzzy feeling in the tummy, it is a power we need to respect and question.