Dissertation
My dissertation charts two centuries of oceanic entanglements stretching from the Suez Canal to the Bay of Bengal. As the historic seaways of Islamic mobility and dwelling became subsumed by British naval power, political economy, and maritime infrastructure, empire inadvertently generated new circuits of travel and assembly for Muslims across the Indian Ocean.
Education
Ph.D in History, Harvard University (ABD)
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
My dissertation charts two centuries of oceanic entanglements stretching from the Suez Canal to the Bay of Bengal. As the historic seaways of Islamic mobility and dwelling became subsumed by British naval power, political economy, and maritime infrastructure, empire inadvertently generated new circuits of travel and assembly for Muslims across the Indian Ocean.
I am interested in how imperialism’s aqueous infrastructures—its canals, ports, telegraphs, quarantines, coaling stations, steam routes, etc—were not only instruments of capitalist extraction and circulation but were also reappropriated by Muslim actors as conduits of communication, sentiment, and resistance.
Drawing on archives from South Asia, the Gulf, and the United Kingdom, my dissertation traces a shifting dialectic between Islam and empire through an eclectic cast of figures and steam-driven itineraries: labourers and lascars, poets and pilgrims, reformists and radicals.
By foregrounding the lived experiences and interpretive horizons of Indian Ocean Muslims, this dissertation situates their movements and imaginaries within the broader transformations wrought by new imperialism, infrastructure, and the globalizing logics of capitalism.
Education
Ph.D in History, Harvard University (ABD)
M.Phil in World History, University of Cambridge
B.A. in History, Philosophy, Near & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Toronto
Research Interests
Indian Ocean History
Global Islam (ca. 1850s)
Modern South Asia and Middle East
Hajj and Muslim Pilgrimage
Epidemics, Quarantine, and Medical History
Science, Technology, and Infrastructure
Philosophy of History
Selected Conference Presentations
“The People’s Khilafat: Subaltern Consciousness in Muslim Bengal, 1919-1924.” Princeton South Asia Conference (“Small Voice of History”). October 30, 2025.
“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
