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SUMMARY:Kinetic Geographies: Thinking through Space and Time across Global Histories
DESCRIPTION:Global Studies University launches its Fall 2026 From Area Studies to Global Studies Seminar Series with a lecture by Pedro Machado, Associate Professor of History at Indiana University Bloomington.
 
The seminar will be moderated by Hessa Alnuaimi, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at The Asia Institute, GSU.
 
Abstract
This seminar explores how global and transregional connections have reshaped historical scholarship by challenging traditional, rigid models of Area Studies. Pedro Machado introduces “kinetic geographies,” understood as spaces in motion rather than fixed, bounded categories, as a framework for examining interactions across interconnected terrestrial and aquatic spaces.
 
Through a discussion of the Indian Ocean as a space of social, political, cultural, and commercial interaction, Machado traces the emergence of oceanic thinking as distinct from conventional maritime-world models. He considers how these frameworks create possibilities for developing transversal perspectives that extend beyond categories such as empire and nation.
 
Machado connects oceanic frameworks with the methodological approaches of global history through his current book project on pearling across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific worlds. Looking beneath the waterline, he examines how states sought to project sovereign jurisdiction across maritime borders and into submarine environments. He relates these processes to the embodied experiences of pearling labor, with particular attention to the Arafura Sea.
 
The seminar argues for approaches to global history that connect broad historical processes with vernacular concepts, specific places, and embodied human lives.
Speaker
Pedro Machado is a global and Indian Ocean historian whose research encompasses commodity histories, enslavement, labor and migration, and the social, cultural, environmental, and commercial trajectories of objects. He is Associate Professor of History at Indiana University Bloomington.
 
His publications include Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean, c. 1750–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2014); Textile Trades, Consumer Cultures and the Material Worlds of the Indian Ocean (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); and Pearls, People and Power: Pearling and Indian Ocean Worlds (Ohio University Press, 2020).
 
In 2023–2024, he led the Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar, “Global Slaveries, Fugitivity, and the Afterlives of Unfreedom,” at Indiana University. Read more.
Moderator
Hessa Alnuaimi is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at The Asia Institute, Global Studies University. Her research examines migration, colonialism, race, and political legitimacy, with particular attention to the Gulf’s integration into modernity and the global capitalist economy. Before joining GSU, she taught at the University of Sharjah and the University of St Andrews and held a research fellowship at Harvard University, where she examined migrant mobilization in the Arabian Gulf.
 
Alnuaimi earned her Ph.D. from the University of St Andrews, where her doctoral research received the American Political Science Association’s Middle East and North Africa Best Dissertation Prize. Read more.
About the Seminar Series
From Area Studies to Global Studies forms part of the one-credit Ph.D. in Global Studies course GSSH 704: Seminar: From Area Studies to Global Studies II. Held over two semesters, the course introduces students to major debates in Area Studies from critical and global perspectives through monthly presentations by invited scholars, required readings, and assignments. While the seminar is a required component of the Ph.D. curriculum, its public sessions are open to the wider GSU community and the public.
 
The series is organized by Salah M. Hassan, Professor of African Art History and Visual Studies, and Binyam Sisay Mendisu, Professor of African Languages and Linguistics, as part of the Ph.D. in Global Studies. Four seminars will be held during the Fall 2026 semester, bringing together scholars whose work examines Africa, Asia, their diasporas, and key debates in Global Studies.
LOCATION:GSU Auditorium
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260917
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260917
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