Focusing on community-led infrastructure projects, "Constructing the Ocean" will investigate how transregional relations play out in the everyday lives and social imaginaries of one of the Gujarati Muslim communities residing in the port cities of Mumbai, Dar es Salaam and Dubai. By way of an ethnographically rich analysis of community-led Muslim infrastructural initiatives, the prpoject aims to advance the study of what has been called ‘thick transregionalism’. Studying the social life of infrastructures of a heterogenous religious community in three littoral locations, it will unpack the links within and between Indian Ocean regions. Aiming to rethink conventional tropes and methods within area studies, the project positions infrastructures as a novel analytical category for studying the Indian Ocean and will produce one of the first simultaneous multi-sited ethnographies of the region. 

In addition to the presentation, there will as usual be introductions, news, and networking.