Dissertation
My dissertation charts two centuries of comingling waters that stretch from the Suez Canal to the Bay of Bengal. This space was a zone of interaction between oceanic world-systems: that of an increasingly colonised Islamic ecumene and an increasingly colonising British Empire. As these historic seaways of Islamic mobility become dominated by British naval power, political econony, and maritime infrastructure, the lineaements of empire produce unintended circuits of travel and spaces of dwelling for Indian Ocean Muslims. In other words, imperialism’s watery infrastructures were re-appropriated as mediums of communication, assembly, discourse, sentiment, and resistance. Consulting archives in South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Gulf, and the United Kingdom, my dissertation narrates this dialectic between Islam and empire through an eclectic array of actors and steam-powered itineraries: of labourers and lascars, poets and pilgrims, reformists and radicals. It foregrounds the subjectivities of Indian Ocean Muslims and places them in the context of new imperialism, infrastructure studies, and global capitalism.
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 comingling waters that stretch from the Suez Canal to the Bay of Bengal. This space was a zone of interaction between oceanic world-systems: that of an increasingly colonised Islamic ecumene and an increasingly colonising British Empire. As these historic seaways of Islamic mobility become dominated by British naval power, political econony, and maritime infrastructure, the lineaements of empire produce unintended circuits of travel and spaces of dwelling for Indian Ocean Muslims. In other words, imperialism’s watery infrastructures were re-appropriated as mediums of communication, assembly, discourse, sentiment, and resistance. Consulting archives in South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Gulf, and the United Kingdom, my dissertation narrates this dialectic between Islam and empire through an eclectic array of actors and steam-powered itineraries: of labourers and lascars, poets and pilgrims, reformists and radicals. It foregrounds the subjectivities of Indian Ocean Muslims and places them in the context of new imperialism, infrastructure studies, and global 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
“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