Faculty

Dale Luis Menezes

Assistant Professor of History, The Asia Institute, Global Studies University

Dale Luis Menezes is a historian of early modern South Asia and the Indian Ocean world, with a particular focus on Goa and the Iberian presence in Asia. He holds a Ph.D. in History from Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.), and Master’s degrees from Georgetown and Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi), along with a Bachelor’s degree from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. He joins us as inaugural faculty and Assistant Professor of History at The Asia Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah.

His research explores how ordinary agrarian communities, particularly those involved in coconut and rice cultivation, shaped the development of empires in the Indian Ocean from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. His doctoral thesis, Four Hundred Monsoons of Coconuts and Rice: The Small and Big People who made the Empire in the Indian Ocean, 1517–1910, foregrounds the role of staple crops and laboring groups in empire-making.

Menezes works across imperial and non-imperial histories of South Asia, analyzing the intersections of local governance, transoceanic commerce, and global empire. His research interests include commodity histories, labor formations, and the development of political thought in regional languages. He contributes to the European Research Council-funded project India’s Politics in its Vernacular, a collaborative effort involving twenty-four scholars working across seventeen Indian languages.

Fluent in Konkani, Portuguese, Dutch, Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, and Afrikaans, Menezes engages deeply with a range of historical archives and political traditions. His work resonates with scholars of South Asia, global empire, and the wider Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea regions.

Research

Menezes’s research explores the interconnected histories of Indo-Portuguese political economies, and global empires, with a focus on political vernaculars, commodities, laborers, and the socio-economic histories of early modern South Asia.

Publications

Menezes, Dale Luis, et al. (eds), Memories, Archived: Contemporary Views from South Asia, Panjim: Sunparanta Goa Center for the Arts, 2024.
Menezes, Dale Luis. “Catholics, Konkani and Indian Nationalism: Brief Notes on News and Politics in Goa and Bombay (c. 1890–1960)”. In Sandra Ataíde Lobo, Jessica Falconi, Remy Dias, and Dave A. Smith (eds.), The Colonial Periodical Press in the Indian and Pacific Ocean Regions, pp. 202-213. Routledge, 2023.
Pinto, Rochelle. Translation, Script and Orality: Becoming a Language of State. Edited by Dale Luis Menezes and Mabel Mascarenhas. Orient BlackSwan, 2021.
Menezes, Dale Luis. “Vimala Devi’s Bhatcars and the Mundcars: Laborers, Landlords, and Culture in Goa.” Kritika Kultura no. 37 (2021): 397-414.
Menezes, Dale Luis. “Gossiping about the Goan Ayah: Migration, Diaspora, and Anxieties at Home in Karmelin.” InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies 7 (2018): 197-211.
Menezes, Dale Luis. “Christians and spices: a critical reflection on Indian nationalist discourses in Portuguese India.” Práticas da História. Journal on Theory, Historiography and Uses of the Past 3 (2016): 29-50.