Jozef Johannes Leon Gommans, shortened to Jos J. L. Gommans (born 1 April 1963) is a Dutch historian and a professor of Colonial and Global History at the Institute for History, Leiden University.
He was born in Venlo. Studying at the Catholic University of Nijmegen and Leiden University, he graduated in 1987.[1] From 1989 to 1993 he was a research fellow for the Dutch Research Council. He was appointed as associate professor of South Asian history at Leiden University in 1993, gaining professorship in Colonial and Global History in 2011.[2]
Gommans is known for the books The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, 1710-1780 (Oxford University Press, 1999) and Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire (Routledge, 2002).[3] [4][5][6][7][8] He has also sat on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (also editor-in-chief), Itinerario and Rijksmuseum Bulletin.[3] He is a fellow of Academia Europaea.[2]