Dissertation
My dissertation traces the maritime domains of nineteenth and twentieth century West and South Asia. From the Suez Canal to the Bay of Bengal, I argue British colonial domination, abstraction, and circulation produced unintended spaces of dwelling and circuits of mobility for Indian Ocean Muslims. Maritime technologies and infrastructures were re-appropriated as mediums of Islamic space-making, connection, discourse, sentiment, and resistance. I follow the eclectic itineraries of Muslim mariners and lascars, poets and pilgrims, reformists and radicals, as part of a unified spatial narrative and material history of Islam in global capitalism.
Education
Ph.D in History, Harvard University (2021-Present)
Research Interests
Indian Ocean History
Selected Conference Presentations
“A River Called Titash: or, a Rheology of Twentieth-Century Bengal.” McGill Indian Ocean World Centre (“Visual Portrayals of Environmental Crises”). May 15, 2024.
Selected Fellowships and Awards
Tentative: Oceanic Sentiments: Imperial Infrastructure and Islamic Habitus in the Indian Ocean, 1865-1955
My dissertation traces the maritime domains of nineteenth and twentieth century West and South Asia. From the Suez Canal to the Bay of Bengal, I argue British colonial domination, abstraction, and circulation produced unintended spaces of dwelling and circuits of mobility for Indian Ocean Muslims. Maritime technologies and infrastructures were re-appropriated as mediums of Islamic space-making, connection, discourse, sentiment, and resistance. I follow the eclectic itineraries of Muslim mariners and lascars, poets and pilgrims, reformists and radicals, as part of a unified spatial narrative and material history of Islam in global capitalism.
Education
Ph.D in History, Harvard University (2021-Present)
M.Phil in World History, University of Cambridge
B.A. in History, Philosophy, University of Toronto
Research Interests
Indian Ocean History
Global Histories of Islam (ca. 1850s)
Modern South Asia and Middle East
Hajj and Muslim Pilgrimage
Epidemics, Quarantine, and Medical History
Science, Technology, and Infrastructure
Visual Culture
Philosophy of History
Marxism and Critical Theory
Selected Conference Presentations
“A River Called Titash: or, a Rheology of Twentieth-Century Bengal.” McGill Indian Ocean World Centre (“Visual Portrayals of Environmental Crises”). May 15, 2024.
“Hajj, Quarantine, and the Remaking of Kamaran Island, 1881-1951.” NMCGSA 24th Annual Graduate Symposium ("Dis/Connections: Interactions with the Past in West Asia and North Africa”). March 14, 2024.
“World-Making after the Ottoman Empire: World Islamic Conferences and Experiments in Muslim Universalism, 1926-1934.” Middle East Beyond Borders Graduate Student Workshop. Hosted by Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard. September 18, 2023.
“Kamaran Island, Hajj Quarantine, and the Medicalization of the Indian Ocean, 1865–1951.” Cambridge Oceanic and Maritime History Workshop. Hosted by the Faculty of History at Cambridge. October 21, 2022.
“Time and the Shutter: Allochronism and Colonial Photography in the Middle East” for Boundaries: A Research Symposium. Hosted by University of Toronto History Students’ Association. April 26, 2017.
“Iranian Modernity and Cinema” for Iranian Modernity: A Graduate Student Symposium. Hosted by University of Toronto’s Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations and Diyar. March 31, 2017.
Selected Fellowships and Awards
Krupp Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship, 2024-2025
Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute Winter Funding, 2022
Writers’ Fellowship, Wave Art Collective, 2021
Graduate Tutors Prize for Distinction in a Masters Degree, 2019
University of Cambridge Smuts Memorial Fund, 2019
University of Cambridge Centre of Islamic Studies Studentship, 2018
New College Registrars’ Graduation Award in the Humanities, 2018
Paul Matthews Memorial Scholarship in the Humanities, 2015, 2017
