Multi-Methods in the Study of the African Diaspora in South Asia

As a South Asianist by training teaching in an African American & African Diaspora Studies Program, my daily task is to advance interdisciplinary conversations in Black Studies and South Asian Studies. I center my research methodologies on the African Diaspora in South Asia within the ideological frameworks animating the field of Black Studies. This presentation highlights the key questions, theoretical framework, methods, archives, and findings of ethnographic field research on the Sidi (African-Indian) Sufi devotional tradition, conducted in the state of Gujarat and the city of Mumbai in western India from 2017-2019. The presentation demonstrates the importance of multilinguistic, multi-sited, and collaborative, multidisciplinary research on the African Diaspora in South Asia (and in Indian Ocean worlds more broadly) to the tandem development of the fields of Black Studies and South Asian Studies.