Saarah Jappie

Saarah Jappie’s research explores the afterlives of early modern exile and slavery in the Indian Ocean world, with a focus on written culture, sacred geographies and notions of diaspora in island Southeast Asia and Southern Africa. Alongside her academic projects, Jappie has contributed to public history and art initiatives that aim to both challenge traditional archives and to imagine from them. Such work includes collaborations with the Burning Museum Collective, artist Gabrielle Goliath and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, amongst others. She has also written on transoceanic histories and heritage for popular publications such as Africa is a Country and The Chimurenga Chronicle. Jappie has studied in Australia, Indonesia, South Africa and the USA, and holds a PhD in History from Princeton University (2018). From 2018-2019 she lectured in histories of the Global South at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and since October 2019, she serves as Program Officer for the Transregional Collaboratory on the Indian Ocean, based at the Social Science Research Council in New York.