Contemporary Lives of Indian Ocean Worlds

Smriti Srinivas is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis (PhD, the Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University). Her research interests include religion, cities and urban cultures, and India/South Asia within comparative/transcultural worlds. She has also researched and written extensively about Bangalore. Apart from articles and edited journal symposia, her books include A Place for Utopia: Urban Designs from South Asia (2015); In the Presence of Sai Baba: Body, City, and Memory in a Global Religious Movement (2008); Landscapes of Urban Memory: The Sacred and the Civic in India’s High-Tech City (2001); and The Mouths of People, Voice of God: Buddhists and Muslims in a Frontier Community of Ladakh (1998). She is also coeditor of Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds (2020). She has received numerous grants for her research from institutions such as the Mellon foundation, the Rockefeller foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of California Humanities Network, the American Academy of Religion, the Atlanta History Center, India Foundation for the Arts and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. She is editor for the Routledge Series on the Indian Ocean and Trans-Asia.

Neelima Jeychandran is a Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor of Asian Studies and African Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She is an Indian Ocean Studies scholar who examines memoryscapes, material cultures, performances, and invisible and affective histories to study Afro-Asian intimacies and exchanges in the Global South. She has done extensive fieldwork in southwestern India and has written articles on transoceanic consciousness and African historical landscapes in Kerala and Gujarat. Jeychandran is the co-editor of the book Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds and the co-editor of the Routledge Series on the Indian Ocean and Trans-Asia.

Nidhi Mahajan is currently an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of California – Santa Cruz, and Research Fellow at The Africa Institute-Sharjah. Her book manuscript Moorings: The Dhow Trade, Capitalism, and Sovereignty in the Indian Ocean is a historical ethnography that examines how the dhow trade has articulated with different state forms to become a crucial intermediary in global shipping. The book is based on archival and ethnographic research across India, Kenya, the UK, Tanzania, the UAE, and Qatar where her interlocutors included dhow owners, sailors and their families, customs and port authorities, shipping agents, merchants, brokers, state officials, activists, and religious leaders. Ultimately, she explores the mutually constituted relationship between mobility, capitalism, and sovereignty in the Indian Ocean, examining how mobile dhow networks have been pushed into the underbelly of the global economy. Her research has been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, and an SSRC Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship. Existing publications based on this research include: “Dhow Itineraries: The Making of a Shadow Economy in the Western Indian Ocean” that appeared in Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and chapters in edited volumes such as World on the Horizon and Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds.

Ishani Saraf is a PhD candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. She researches the social and material dynamics of scrap metal trade from a trans-local perspective. She is interested in exploring themes of place and belonging, work and material practices, toxicity and regulation, and urban lifeworlds. Before pursuing her PhD, she completed her BA in Sociology at Miranda House, and her MA and MPhil in Sociology at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics.

Maya Costa-Pinto is an anthropologist with research interests encompassing urban ecologies, legal anthropology, mobilities, transnational networks and emerging technologies. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Davis, and a JD from the University of Melbourne. Her PhD dissertation explores embodied understandings of urban spatiality and multiple efforts to build sustainable urban futures. In particular, the dissertation examines the contestations and collaborations that emerge when diverse constituencies in Goa embark on urban regeneration initiatives that seek to integrate waterways with the built environment. Maya is also interested in the nexus between migration and placemaking. She has previously conducted research and published on the transnational connections among the East Timorese community in Australia.

Prateeti Punja Ballal grew up in Bangalore and did her postgraduate work in the US. She taught Literature at various universities there, most recently at Hunter College, City University of New York. She earlier worked in the software industry for fifteen years. She has been a recipient of a Mellon fellowship for her research and several regional and international awards for her technical publications. A musician and dancer, she has a sustaining interest in the arts.