The project “Constructing the Ocean: Indian Ocean Infrastructures and Thick Transregionalism (CO-OC)”, is funded by DF. Cecil works with Uwe Skoda (Associate Professor, Global Studies) and Thomas Brandt Fibiger (Associate Professor, The Study of Religion). Her subproject involves four months of ethnographic fieldwork with construction companies and architects in a Gujarati Shia community in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar. While taking its point of departure in the construction of buildings, the project focuses on material as well as social and religious infrastructures across the Indian Ocean.  

Cecil has a PhD from Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University and defended her thesis entitled "Ambiguous Belongings: Anxiety and Potentiality among People of Indian Origin in Tanzania" in 2017. During her PhD, she carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Tanzania and London and was a visiting student at Center for South Asia, Stanford University. Since her PhD, Cecil has been an external lecturer at Anthropology and Experience Economy and a curator responsible for the Ethnographic Collections at Moesgaard Museum. Cecil also holds a postdoc position at Moesgaard Museum in the project “Materiality of Homeliness among Mobile Groups” funded by Veluxfondens Museumssatsning, and is the editor-in-chief of the ethnographic journal Jordens Folk.