Daniel Sanjiv Roberts studied English in Chennai and Hyderabad, India, before winning a Nehru Scholarship which took him to Cambridge University for his PhD. His work experience includes teaching at Loyola College, Chennai, Magdalene College, Cambridge, and Manchester University, UK, as well as a stint as an assistant editor in publishing house, Orient Longman, Hyderabad.

His work on Robert Southey won a prize from the Modern Language Association of America as a distinguished scholarly edition in 2005. He is currently engaged in a collaborative scholarly project, Ireland, Education and Empire, which examines the role of higher education in Ireland in the shaping of imperial history, and  another collaborative project on Early Irish Fiction.