Gordon Johnson (historian)  Gordon Johnson (born 1943) is a British historian of colonial India. Born on 13 September 1943, Johnson was educated at Richmond School in North Yorkshire and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a fellow at Trinity from 1966 to 1974, and at Selwyn College from 1974 to 1993. He was appointed as a lecturer in Oriental studies at the University of Cambridge in 1974, remaining in that position until 2005. He was the President of Wolfson College, Cambridge, from 1993 to 2010, and is now an honorary fellow of the college. He was the Director of the Cambridge University Centre of South Asian Studies from 1983 to 2001, and had been a Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the university from 2002 to 2010. He served as the first Provost of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship Trust from 2000 to 2010, and as chair of the Syndicate governing Cambridge University Press from 1981 to 2010. He was the President of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 2015 to 2018. He is the General Editor of the "New Cambridge History of India", published in 1979.