About IOWG
Indian Ocean Working Group
Through lectures, webinars, conferences, and monthly reading groups, the IOWG provides a platform for scholars from various disciplines to be in a conversation on the Indian Ocean World. We explore historical and contemporary issues concerning human mobility, arts and aesthetics, gender and the family, trade networks and religious diasporas, and race and ethnicity in the Persian Gulf, South Asia, and East Africa.
Faculty Lead
Uday Chandra
Uday Chandra is an Assistant Professor of Government. He received his B.A. in economics from Grinnell College and his PhD in political science from Yale University in 2013. Uday’s research lies at the intersection between critical agrarian studies, political anthropology, postcolonial theory, and South Asian studies…
Rogaia Abusharaf
Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf is a Professor of Anthropology and author of Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement (U. of Chicago Press 2009); Female Circumcision: Multicultural Perspectives (Ed.).(University of Pennsylvania Press 2006) and Wanderings (Cornell University Press 2002)…
Firat Oruc
Firat Oruc is Assistant Professor of World Literature at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. His research and teaching specialties center on the multidisciplinary intersections of modern world literature, postcolonial global literatures, cultural and literary studies of the Middle East, translation studies, and world cinema…
Amira Sonbol
Amira Sonbol specializes in the history of modern Egypt, Islamic history and law, women, gender and Islam and is the author of several books including The New Mamluks: Egyptian Society and Modern Feudalism; Women, the Family and Divorce Laws in Islamic History; The Creation of a Medical Profession in Egypt: 1800-1922; The Memoirs of Abbas Hilmi II: Sovereign of Egypt; Women of the Jordan: Islam, Labor and Law; Beyond the Exotic: Muslim Women’s Histories…
Mohammad Reza Pirbhai
M. Reza Pirbhai is an Associate Professor, specializing in South Asian and World history. His research is focused on Islam in Modern South Asia. He earned a doctorate in History from the University of Toronto (Canada) in 2004. His articles/book chapters on such topics as Islamic law and theology, Hindu nationalism and British travel literature…
IOWG Founder’s Webinar
On August 3rd, 2020, the Indian Ocean Working Group held an online discussion with four of its five founders on how the Indian Ocean Working Group came into being.
Speakers
Amira Sonbol, Professor of History at Georgetown University in Qatar
Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf, Professor of Anthropology at Georgetown University in Qatar
Ahmad Sikainga, Professor of History at The Ohio State University
Sandra L. Richards, Professor Emerita of African American Studies and Theater at Northwestern University in Qatar
Moderator
Uday Chandra, Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University in Qatar