28 Oct 2008

I have the enormous privilege of holding the Museum's Sackler-Caird Research Fellowship for 2007-9, which generously supports my work as Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. I am based in the Department of Sociology, but my research - which centres on the islands and coasts in and around the Indian Ocean and the sea itself - cuts across the disciplines of history and sociology in equal measure. I am about half-way through writing my fellowship book, which tells the stories of some of the extraordinary people who travelled in and around India and the Indian Ocean during the nineteenth century. They include convicts, slaves, sailors, and captives, and more particularly: an African theatrical performer arrested in Calcutta in the 1830s; a Punjabi general transported overseas for treason after the Anglo-Sikh Wars of the 1840s; a Muslim cleric who saved the life of a captured Franco-Indian woman during the 1857 Indian Revolt; and, an American brigadesman who served in the Indian naval force that occupied the Andaman Islands in 1858. I am trying to write about how these people regarded their lives and their social world. What did they think about various types of difference, and what was important to them - 'race', 'ethnicity', 'gender', or some other kind of status or point of reference? And how did they experience life on board ship, and travelling overseas more generally? [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"219738","attributes":{"class":"media-image mt-image-none","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"450","height":"338","alt":"D3594.jpg"}}]] The Harbour of Port Cornwallis, Island of Great Andaman with the fleet getting under weigh for Rangoon by J. Moore, 1825 In reconstructing their stories, I am especially interested in the relationship between the words and images that we find in archives - including official records, private letters, manuscripts, diaries, photographs, and lithographs - and how we might put them together to tell stories and write the kind of histories that usually remain untold. I am interested in sites of commemoration too - including religious tombs and monuments - and how they are shaped by and how they shape what we remember about the past. Finally, I am in the early stages of considering how academic researchers might work together with family historians to share materials and to support one another in our work. The Sackler-Caird Research Fellowship has provided a wonderful opportunity to explore the collections of the National Maritime Museum, and its riches will inform the rest of my research career. If you would like to learn more about my research and publications, or get in touch with me, please follow this link to my university home page.