Indian Ocean series podcast with the Ajam Media Collective

The Indian Ocean series explores topics related to the Islamo-Arabic and Persianate world from the perspective of the Indian Ocean littoral and the people who traversed its waters. These conversations aim to rethink narratives of history and culture, which have been traditionally boxed in by land-based territorial demarcations and regional studies frameworks. This series invites listeners to imagine the complex interconnectedness of life from East Africa to Southeast Asia and beyond.

Selected Publications and Appearances

“Lindsey Stephenson on Mobility, Identity and Sovereignty in the Persian Gulf” Emerging Scholarship Series, Ajam Media Collective

Emerging Scholarship is a series showcasing the research and interests of new voices emerging from academia that focus on the social worlds, histories, and traveling cultures of Central and West Asia.

Lindsey Stephenson (PhD, Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University) is a social and legal historian of the Middle East and Indian Ocean. Her work focuses on sovereignty, mobility, and identity in the Persian Gulf. She is currently a Postgraduate Research Associate at Princeton University.

“A Shared Heritage: 20th Century Built Environment in the Gulf” Panel organized by the Delegation of the State of Kuwait to the 42nd UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Bahrain. June 2018

Historical Ties Across the Gulf and their Architectural Traces

In the beginning of the twentieth century, increased flows of global capital into the Gulf region led to the transformation of the built environment in the Arab sheikhdoms. While structures previously reflected the towns' tendencies to shift along and across the coasts, concentrations of capital flows in this period led to the increased construction of more permanent structures. This construction boom required both additional laborers and skillsets, many of which were drawn from historical ties to the eastern shores of the Gulf. These cross-Gulf connections are evident in several prominent architectural features of the region. In this talk I will discuss distinct features from both the northern and southern Gulf shores and how they illuminate historical networks to particular regions of the south of Iran.

 “Rethinking Forelands and Hinterlands in the Indian Ocean World” Talk Given at the Aga Khan University, Institute for Muslim Civilisations

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, movement around the Indian Ocean was invigorated by new economic and imperial realities. However, connections around the rim of the Indian Ocean themselves were not new. For many centuries before the arrival of the British, we have evidence of interaction and exchange between Persia, India, Indonesia, East Africa, and many places in between. The combination of long-distance and short-distance trade over time is what wove these societies together both economically and culturally. Until now however, scholarship on the Indian Ocean has mostly used 19th and 20th century realities to focus on long-distance movements towards economic centres, and failed to capture shorter migrations that infused small Indian Ocean ports with a cosmopolitanism of their own over many centuries. In looking at migration between the south of Iran and Kuwait in the early 20th century, this lecture will highlight the ways in which the current ways of framing Indian Ocean connections fail to capture shorter migrations outside of major economic centres. Stephenson will critique the explanatory power of the language of both "foreland and hinterland” and “littoral societies,” and argue for a third way of conceptualising relationships between port cities.

“Under the Sails
Maritime Conversations on Trade and Seafaring - Perspectives from Iran and Kuwait”

For centuries, flows of sailing ships around and across the Persian Gulf connected the Middle East to India and East Africa. The ships that moved across the waters were manned by diverse groups of sailors who returned to the land with more than the goods they carried. They brought music, language, customs, and a particular knowledge of other places from the perspective of the sea. Unfortunately this shared history and experiences of sailing the waters of the western Indian Ocean has not been foregrounded in the face of national histories. Instead the countries around the Gulf littoral have mostly focused on narrating their individual histories of connectivity to major centers in India and East Africa. While these connections are important and still have many stories to tell, this conversation is a first attempt to think about the history of the Gulf from the shared experiences of maritime life. 

Among the first of its kind, this event brings together former sea captains (nakhodas), historians, anthropologists, museum directors, and private collectors from Iran and Kuwait for a conversation on the shared history of maritime life around the Gulf; a story that has been too often lost at sea.