My work spans the Indian Ocean from East Africa to the Indian subcontinent.
The first project took me into archives in Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania, Gujarat and Bombay, as well as London and Washington DC. My teaching interests are similarly broad; I have taught classes on Africa and the Indian Ocean, the history and anthropology of money and debt, global history, and the history of Islam. In both my teaching and research, I explore the intersections of gender, political economy, and material culture, as well as innovative historical methods.
I am currently completing my first book, entitled Mobile Households: The Intimate Economies of Credit Across the Indian Ocean, c. 1860-1964. Proceeding from close comparative analysis of Arabic, Gujarati, and Swahili documents, the work is a micro-history of regional financial and familial networks through the abolition of slavery and the rise and fall of British imperial rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Research for this project received support from the Fulbright Hays, ACLS, the American Institute for Indian Studies, the NYU-Abu Dhabi Humanities Institute, and the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University.
Degrees
PhD New York University, 2016
MA (Honors) University of Edinburgh (History & English Literature), 2006
Awards
2016-2018 Postdoctoral Fellowship, The Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, Northwestern University
2016 Humanities Research Fellowship, NYU Abu Dhabi Institute
2013 Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, Fulbright Hays
2011-2012 Junior Research Fellowship, American Institute of Indian Studies
Selected Publications
“From desh to desh: the family firm as trans-local household in the nineteenth century western Indian Ocean”. Journal of World History (In Press, June 2023).
“Into the Bazaar: Indian Ocean Vernaculars in the Age of Global Capitalism,” co-authored with Fahad Bishara. Journal of Global History, 16, 1(March 2021): 44-64.
“Financing the Indian Ocean Slave Trade.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford & NY: Oxford University Press (September 2022).
"Empire and Capitalism in the Western Indian Ocean." Arab Studies Journal 26, no. 2 (2018): 180-192.
“Keeping it in the Family? Her- and His-Stories among Gujarati Business Communities in the Nineteenth Century Indian Ocean”. In Sharmina Mawani and Anjoom A. Mukadam (eds). Perspectives of Female Researchers: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Gujarati Identities. (Berlin: Logos Verlag Berlin, 2016).
Research
East Africa (Tanzania & Swahili Coast); South Asia (Gujarat & Bombay); Histories of Global Capitalism; Economic Anthropology; Gender and Political Economy