Join us for a book conversation with Nidhi Mahajan on Thursday, February 5, 2026, from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM (UAE time) at the Auditorium, The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah (location map).
She will discuss her latest book, Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean, exploring the lives of Muslim seafarers from the Gulf of Kachchh in India and their transoceanic voyages, and share insights into ethnographic research, historical analysis, and writing across maritime worlds. The session will include a Q&A and a book signing.
Nidhi Mahajan is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California–Santa Cruz. She was the inaugural Fatema Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Cultural Studies (2020–2022) at The Africa Institute. Her research focuses on political economy, maritime labor, and historical, political, and legal anthropology, with a regional focus on the Indian Ocean world. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Cornell University. Her first book, Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean (University of California Press, 2025), was developed during her residency at The Africa Institute. Her articles and essays have appeared in journals such as History of the Present; Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East; Monsoon; Island Studies; Cambridge History of Global Migrations; Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds; Cosmopolitan Cultures and Oceanic Thought; and World on the Horizon, and she has also written for Ajam Media Collective, Compare Afrique, Cityscapes, and Middle East Report. As an artist, she has produced multimedia exhibitions exploring seafaring, labor, and oceanic histories, shown internationally at venues including the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Khoj (Delhi), Alliance Française (Nairobi), Macondo Literature Festival (Nairobi), Diriyah Biennale (2024), and Hayy Jameel (Saudi Arabia). She has also written ethnographic fiction on seafaring and climate change for the World Weather Network.
Moorings follows sailors from the Gulf of Kachchh in India as they voyage across the Indian Ocean on mechanized wooden vessels known as vahans, or dhows. These voyages generate capital through moorings that are spatial, moral, material, and conceptual. From the perspective of the dhow, the book examines the social worlds of Muslim seafarers navigating multiple regulatory regimes, colonial legacies, neoliberal economies, and the rise of Hindutva, insurgencies, climate change, and border regimes.
Based on historical and ethnographic research aboard ships, at ports, and in religious shrines and homes, Moorings shows how capitalism derives value from historically sedimented practices grounded in caste, gender, and transregional community-based forms of regulation. Read more.
George Jose is a Visiting Associate Professor of Anthropology at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). He has held senior academic and leadership roles across India, Europe, and the Middle East, including Dean of the Jyoti Dalal School of Liberal Arts (NMIMS University, Mumbai) and Program Director of the Asia Society India Centre. His research explores metropolitan transformations in the global South, cultural production, and urban precarity. He is co-editor of Mumbai / Bombay: Majoritarian Neoliberalism, Informality, Resistance, and Wellbeing (2022). Read more.
“This is a brilliant book. It sensitively tells the stories of seafarers on dhows traversing the Indian Ocean. We hear about their struggles with caste and class prejudice, racism and Islamophobia. The seafarers aboard dhows who navigate multiple sovereignties at sea and complex border regimes on land are rendered lovingly here, in three dimensions and with all the requisite appreciation of complexity and respect for their trajectories.”—Laleh Khalili, author of The Corporeal Life of Seafaring
“A stunning multisited ethnography of the ships and smugglers that underpin the global economy. Nidhi Mahajan’s incisive scholarship shows us how borders, shrines, and meals are the moorings that enable mobilities across the Indian Ocean.”—Johan Mathew, author of Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea
“Draws from rich, intimate, and challenging fieldwork and emphasizes how seafarers from Western India contest and challenge their marginality by turning to the sea—in ways that follow in the footsteps of generations before them—seeking out possibilities amidst perilous circumstances.”—Jatin Dua, author of Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean
Join us for a book conversation with Nidhi Mahajan on Thursday, February 5, 2026, from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM (UAE time) at the Auditorium, The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah (location map).
Join us for a book conversation with Nidhi Mahajan on Thursday, February 5, 2026, from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM (UAE time) at the Auditorium, The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah (location map).
She will discuss her latest book, Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean, exploring the lives of Muslim seafarers from the Gulf of Kachchh in India and their transoceanic voyages, and share insights into ethnographic research, historical analysis, and writing across maritime worlds. The session will include a Q&A and a book signing.
Nidhi Mahajan is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California–Santa Cruz. She was the inaugural Fatema Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Cultural Studies (2020–2022) at The Africa Institute. Her research focuses on political economy, maritime labor, and historical, political, and legal anthropology, with a regional focus on the Indian Ocean world. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Cornell University. Her first book, Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean (University of California Press, 2025), was developed during her residency at The Africa Institute. Her articles and essays have appeared in journals such as History of the Present; Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East; Monsoon; Island Studies; Cambridge History of Global Migrations; Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds; Cosmopolitan Cultures and Oceanic Thought; and World on the Horizon, and she has also written for Ajam Media Collective, Compare Afrique, Cityscapes, and Middle East Report. As an artist, she has produced multimedia exhibitions exploring seafaring, labor, and oceanic histories, shown internationally at venues including the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Khoj (Delhi), Alliance Française (Nairobi), Macondo Literature Festival (Nairobi), Diriyah Biennale (2024), and Hayy Jameel (Saudi Arabia). She has also written ethnographic fiction on seafaring and climate change for the World Weather Network.
Moorings follows sailors from the Gulf of Kachchh in India as they voyage across the Indian Ocean on mechanized wooden vessels known as vahans, or dhows. These voyages generate capital through moorings that are spatial, moral, material, and conceptual. From the perspective of the dhow, the book examines the social worlds of Muslim seafarers navigating multiple regulatory regimes, colonial legacies, neoliberal economies, and the rise of Hindutva, insurgencies, climate change, and border regimes.
Based on historical and ethnographic research aboard ships, at ports, and in religious shrines and homes, Moorings shows how capitalism derives value from historically sedimented practices grounded in caste, gender, and transregional community-based forms of regulation. Read more.
George Jose is a Visiting Associate Professor of Anthropology at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). He has held senior academic and leadership roles across India, Europe, and the Middle East, including Dean of the Jyoti Dalal School of Liberal Arts (NMIMS University, Mumbai) and Program Director of the Asia Society India Centre. His research explores metropolitan transformations in the global South, cultural production, and urban precarity. He is co-editor of Mumbai / Bombay: Majoritarian Neoliberalism, Informality, Resistance, and Wellbeing (2022). Read more.
“This is a brilliant book. It sensitively tells the stories of seafarers on dhows traversing the Indian Ocean. We hear about their struggles with caste and class prejudice, racism and Islamophobia. The seafarers aboard dhows who navigate multiple sovereignties at sea and complex border regimes on land are rendered lovingly here, in three dimensions and with all the requisite appreciation of complexity and respect for their trajectories.”—Laleh Khalili, author of The Corporeal Life of Seafaring
“A stunning multisited ethnography of the ships and smugglers that underpin the global economy. Nidhi Mahajan’s incisive scholarship shows us how borders, shrines, and meals are the moorings that enable mobilities across the Indian Ocean.”—Johan Mathew, author of Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea
“Draws from rich, intimate, and challenging fieldwork and emphasizes how seafarers from Western India contest and challenge their marginality by turning to the sea—in ways that follow in the footsteps of generations before them—seeking out possibilities amidst perilous circumstances.”—Jatin Dua, author of Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean
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