Born and educated in Lucknow, Veena Talwar Oldenburg moved to the United States in 1970 and stayed on after her PhD in history to teach and share a life with Philip Oldenburg in New York. She is currently a Professor of History at Baruch College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has written several scholarly articles and published two books, The Making of Colonial Lucknow, 1856-1877 (University of Princeton Press) and Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime (Oxford University Press, New York).