Anita Sivakumar

DPhil Research Topic

Entangled Archipelagos: Ecology, Empire, and Trade Between the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Southeast Asia, 1789–1950

I am interested in using the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a site to examine the ecological, cultural, and trade (dis)connections between the Islands and Southeast Asia—particularly Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore—during the British colonial period, and, to a lesser extent, the Japanese Occupation. I aim to explore not only the effects of imperialism on the Islands' ecological landscapes, but also the ways in which multiple actors—including surveyors and scientists—understood and interacted with the environment. In doing so, this project will trace interspecies relationships, trans-imperial networks, and intra-Asian trade within and beyond the Indian Ocean.

Supervisor: Erica Charters and Nayanika Mathur

Before coming to Oxford, I completed an MPhil in World History at the University of Cambridge and a BA (Hons) in History at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.