Dissertation
From the Suez Canal to the Bay of Bengal, my dissertation charts two centuries of oceanic entanglements between the British Indian Empire and Indian Ocean Islam. I am interested in how imperial infrastructure and political economy both displaced and generated new circuits of inter-Asian travel and assembly for maritime Muslims.
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
From the Suez Canal to the Bay of Bengal, my dissertation charts two centuries of oceanic entanglements between the British Indian Empire and Indian Ocean Islam. I am interested in how imperial infrastructure and political economy both displaced and generated new circuits of inter-Asian travel and assembly for maritime Muslims.
I explore how imperialism’s oceanic infrastructures—canals, ports, telegraphs, quarantines, coaling stations, customs houses—functioned not only as instruments of domination, but also as sites of appropriation and re-signification. Within and against these engineered environments, Muslim actors fashioned conduits of communication, sentiment, and resistance that escaped the designs of empire even as they traversed its arteries.
Drawing on archives from South Asia, the Gulf, and the United Kingdom, my dissertation traces a shifting, steam-driven dialectic between Islam and empire through an eclectic cast of figures: labourers and lascars, poets and pilgrims, reformists and radicals. By centering the lived experiences and interpretive horizons of Indian Ocean Muslims, this dissertation situates their movements and imaginaries within the broader, violent, and abstractive transformations wrought by new imperialism, maritime infrastructure, and industrial 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
সুখানীর কথা (1927)