Devleena Ghosh

Heather Goodall

Stephen Muecke

Michael Pearson

Sharon Davidson

Devleena Ghosh

Intercolonial Networks of the Indian Ocean

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Stephen Muecke

Devleena Ghosh

is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney. Originally from Calcutta, she did her Ph.D. at the University of Sydney on the construction of femininity and domesticity in Bengali women’s magazines. She works and teaches across a range of disciplinary areas and is particularly interested in the enmeshing of cultures and technologies, in ideas of borders and space and in the constructions of migrant cultures and identities.

Her supervisory experience has included topics such as mixed race narratives in Fiji, being Ovambo in Namibia, historical biographies set in colonial India, multimedia works about multi-cultural identities, travel narratives in Malaysia, Beirut cityscapes and Jordanian immigrants in Sydney. She also has researched extensively on youth culture and performance in migrant communities, having been cultural advisor to the Australia Council funded performance projects Suburban Masala: from Mumbai to Marrickville (Sidetrack Theatre, 2002) and I do … but (Powerhouse Youth Theatre, Fairfield, 2006). She was a participant in india@oz.sangam (Urban Theatre Project, Carnivale, Riverside Theatre, 2003) and is on the board of the Urban Theatre Project.

Her books include Colonialism and Modernity (with Paul Gillen, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2007) and Cultures of Trade: Indian Ocean Exchanges (ed. with Stephen Muecke, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, 2007). Her forthcoming publications include the edited volumes Women in Asia: Shadowlines (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, 2008) and Water, Borders and Sovereignty in Asia (with Goodall and Donald, Routledge, UK, 2008).

Contact details: Email Devleena Ghosh

Heather Goodall

Heather Goodall is Professor of History at the University of Technology Sydney where she coordinates the Global Studies undergraduate program and teaches in Global histories, Environmental studies and Indigenous histories.
She has worked closely in collaborative projects with Indigenous people in regional and remote Australia and with a range of urban community members in innovative social histories.

She has published on Indigenous people's cultural and environmental relationships to land and water in colonial and contemporary Australia. Her current research is in two areas. One is on the environmental history of Sydney's urban Georges River, undertaken with Indigenous, Anglo, Arabic-speaking and Vietnamese Australians. The other is on the history of the 900 Indian seafarers who played an active role in Sydney in 1945 during the boycott of Dutch shipping to support Indonesian Independence. This later work has led to a collaborative project investigating the political, cultural and environmental interactions of Intercoloniality in the Indian Ocean, with Devleena Ghosh, Stephen Muecke and Michael Pearson.

Contact details: Email Heather Goodall

Stephen Muecke

is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Technology Sydney. He is also an Australian Professorial Fellow and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has a long-term research interest in Indigenous Studies, transnational cultures and new ethnography.
Stephen took his Masters from Paris VIII working on the sociolinguistics of verbal parody performances, and has since worked (for his PhD) on the narratology of Aboriginal stories from the West Kimberley (WA). Reading the Country: Introduction to Nomadology (1984) was an award-winning exercise in experimental ethnography. He has also researched Aboriginal philosophy (Ancient & Modern: Time, Culture and Indigenous Philosophy, UNSW Press, 2004), fictocritical writing (No Road (bitumen all the way), 1997, travel writing and the life and work of David Unaipon.

Contact details: Email Stephen Muecke

Michael Pearson

is an Adjunct Professor at UTS and is working with Associate Professor Stephen Muecke and Dr Devleena Ghosh on an ARC funded project exploring the connections between commercial and cultural relations in the Indian Ocean Region.

Michael taught Indian history at the University of New South Wales until his retirement in 2001 and has published 14 books and over 70 articles. His particular interests are the Portuguese in India, trade and cultural relations between India and East Africa and pilgrimage. Most recently he has published two volumes on the Indian Ocean -The Indian Ocean (Routledge, The Seas in History Series, 2003) and The World of the Indian Ocean, 1500-1800: Studies in Economic, Social and Cultural History (Variorum Collected Studies Series, 2005).

Contact details: Email Michael Pearson

Lola Sharon Davidson

Lola Sharon Davidson is the Research Assistant for the Indian Ocean Project. Lola studied Anthropology and History in Paris and Sydney. Her doctoral thesis concerned the religious and intellectual history of the European Middle Ages. Her most recent publication is a history of Westpac, Australia’s oldest bank. She has a long-standing interest in India and is currently researching the cultural implications of the textile trade in the Indian Ocean Region.

Contact details: Email Lola Davidson