Chhaya Goswami

Dr. Chhaya Goswami is a specialist in the maritime history of India’s west coast and the western Indian Ocean. Her research focuses on trans-regional and trans-oceanic commodity exchanges, maritime trading networks, diaspora and community histories, business history, oral history, and the phenomenon of violence at sea. She is the author of two acclaimed books on the maritime trading linkages of Kachchh with Eastern Arabia and East Africa: The Call of the Sea: Kachchhi Traders in Muscat and Zanzibar, c.1800–1880 (Orient BlackSwan, 2011) and Globalization Before Its Time: Gujarati Merchants from Kachchh (Penguin Books, 2016). She has also co- edited, with Professor Edward Alpers, the volume Transregional Trade and Traders: Situating Gujarat in the Indian Ocean (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her scholarship has been recognised by the Indian History Congress, which awarded her two Best Paper Prizes and, in 2015, the Pandit Hiralal Gupta Best Book Prize for her first Book. Dr. Goswami has held prestigious academic fellowships namely an Honorary University Fellowship at the University of Exeter, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Warwick, a Senior Visiting Fellowship at University College London (UCL), Qatar (2018–2019), and a Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of Glasgow. Currently, Goswami is Head and Associate Professor for the Centre for Indian Ocean and Transoceanic Studies, Somaiya School of Civilisation, Somaiya Vidyavihar University. Her latest research focuses on Maritime Trade and Violence in the Gulf of Kachchh c.1650-1820.