About my current research

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new wealth brought about by connection to global capitalist networks through the pearl trade transformed life around the Gulf and Indian Ocean. My current research project is interested in how the material and culinary world was transformed by new connections and new "luxuries" (buying bread baked outside the home, for example). To tell this story, I am focusing in particular on the transition to wage labor throughout the region.

My research explores how new capital flows not only changed lives of individuals, but the shape of societies and social interactions within them.