Professor Talbot recently completed a major study of the impact of the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent on the neighbouring Pakistani and Indian cities of Lahore and Amritsar. The study was funded by a two year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. The award was held in conjunction with a Visiting Fellowship in History at Balliol College Oxford during 2003-4. This is the first comparative work on the processes of violence, migration and resettlement on both the Indian and Pakistan Punjabs. The study also seeks to explain why Lahore has thrived despite its border locality, whereas Amritsar's economic development has stagnated since 1947. The work builds on a number of earlier publications on the history of the colonial Punjab, including the only full length study of the undivided province's last Prime Minister Khizr Tiwana. In addition to his work on the 1947 Partition and its aftermath, Professor Talbot is interested in Pakistan's post-independence political history. He has published a number of articles on this. His 1999 full length study, Pakistan: A Modern History was republished by Hurst in 2006 in a revised and updated edition.
He is currently working on a text on the 1947 Partition of India which will draw together many of the detailed threads of earlier works in a synoptic and theoretical account. He is organising a conference in Southampton in July 2007 on the theme of 'The Independence of India and Pakistan: Sixtieth Anniversary Reflections.' This will bring together scholars from around the world to address this subject from the perspectives of history, politics, international relations, social anthropology, literature and film.
- Pakistan: A Modern History (revised edition, Hurst, 2005)
- People on the Move: Punjabi Colonial and Post-Colonial Migration jointly edited with Shinder Thandi (Oxford University Press, 2004)
- Khizr Tiwana, the Punjab Unionist Party and the Partition of India (OxfordUniversity press, 2002)
- India and Pakistan (Arnold, 2000)
- Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent jointly edited with Gurharpal Singh (Oxford University Press, 2000)
- Freedom's Cry: The Popular Dimension in the Pakistan Movement and Partition Experience in North-West India (Oxford University Press, 1996)
- Punjabi Identity: Continuity and Change jointly edited with Gurharpal Singh (Manohar, 1996)
- Punjab and the Raj1849-1947 (Manohar, 1988)
- Provincial Politics and the Pakistan Movement: The Growth of the Muslim League in North-West and North-East India 1937-1947 (Oxford University Press, 1988)
