A Conference by the Center for the Advanced Study of India
in partnership with EnviroLab, Penn Anthropology, and Penn Music
Organizers:
Professor Nikhil Anand (Interim Director, CASI)
Dr. Matt Barlow (TU Munich; CASI Climate Postdoc, 2024-25)
Dr. Sita Mamidipudi (CASI Climate Postdoc)
Location:
March 25: PCPSE Auditorium (Lower Level) 133 S. 36th Street
March 26-27: Penn Museum (Widener Lecture Hall) 3260 South Street and Penn Music (Lerner 101) 201 S. 34th Street
About the Conference:
The coastal worlds of the Indian Ocean emerge through long and connected histories of trade, migration, exploitation, and resistance, as dynamic places where traditions, livelihoods, ecologies and cultures mesh. The social worlds and lively ecologies of these places constantly adapt to and re-orient within the more-than-environmental climates in which they are made, offering insights into trans-scalar practices and politics across place and time, connected through weather, water, and sociality in the aftermath of colonial and capitalist extraction.
Taking the Indian Ocean and its coastlines as both method and analytic, this conference will challenge terrestrial and state-based approaches to socio-ecological knowledge making and encourages participants to think through permeability, fluidity, transformation, and excess in amphibious worlds (Anand 2025; Camargo et al. 2025). We ask: How does being situated on the edge of the Indian Ocean reframe discussions of climate change, urbanization, and infrastructure, and in doing so, help to re-imagine shared histories and imagined futures (Dewan 2021)? How do the monsoonal rhythms of littoral worlds affect livelihoods where communities are forced to adapt to disappearing coastlines and engineered shores (Harms 2024)? Why is it important to understand coasts themselves as processes of desiccation and design, as fabrications of a two-dimensional cartographic imaginary (Chitra 2024)?
Please check the CASI website for the Conference registration link. https://casi.sas.upenn.edu/events/coastal-worlds-conference