Rana Shantashil Rajyeswar Mitter OBE FBA (born 11 August 1969) is a British historian and political scientist of Indian descent who specialises in the History of the People's Republic of China. He is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School.^[1]

Mitter, of Indian Bengali heritage,^[2] was born in Cambridge^[3] and grew up on the south coast of England, near Brighton.^[4] He was educated at Lancing College and King's College, Cambridge, where he received both his MA and PhD; in 1991 he was elected President of the Cambridge Union. He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University.

Until 2023 he was Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, formerly director of Oxford's China Centre,^[4] and a Fellow and Vice-Master of St Cross College.^[5][2][6] His 2013 book China’s War with Japan, 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival (titled Forgotten Ally: China’s War with Japan, 1937-45 for publication in the US), about the Second Sino-Japanese War, was well received by critics.^{[7][8][9][10]}

On 16 July 2015, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).^[11]

He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to education.^[12]

He has published several op-eds for The Guardian on contemporary China politics.^[13] He is also a regular presenter for Night Waves (now known as "Free Thinking") on BBC Radio 3.^[14]