Faramerz Dabhoiwala

Faramerz Noshir Dabhoiwala (born 1969)^[1] is a historian and senior research scholar at Princeton University, New Jersey, United States, where he teaches and writes about the social history, cultural history, and intellectual history of the English-speaking world, from the Middle Ages to the present day.^[2][3]

Dabhoiwala studied in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and received his bachelor's degree from the University of York, before attending the University of Oxford, where he received his PhD in 1995. His dissertation was on prostitution in London in the 17th and 18th centuries.^[4][5][1][6]

Before moving to Princeton University, he was the Senior Germaine Scholar at Brasenose College, University of Oxford (1992–1994) and a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College (1996–1998). He is an Emeritus Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.^[6]

His 2012 book, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution, examines the first sexual revolution and the history of human sexuality.^[7][8][9] It was named book of the year at The Economist.^[10] His second book, What is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea was published in 2025.^[11][12]

Dabhoiwala is a Parsi.^[13] He has four children, two with his partner, astrophysicist Jo Dunkley. She is a professor at Princeton.^[14]

• Fara Dabhoiwala, "A Man of Parts and Learning". Fara Dabhoiwala on the portrait of Francis Williams, London Review of Books, Vol. 46, No. 22, 21 November 2024.
• Fara Dabhoiwala, "Imperial Delusions" (review of Priya Satia, Time's Monster: How History Makes History, Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2020, 363 pp.; Mahmood Mamdani, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities, Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2020, 401 pp.; and Adom Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination, Princeton University Press, 2021 [?], 271 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXVIII, no. 11 (1 July 2021), pp. 59–62.