ENTANGLED SEASCAPES
More-than-human Histories across Oceanic Worlds
22–24 January 2026
Academia Belgica, Rome
This international conference brought together scholars working on pre-modern and early modern oceanic worlds: from the Indian Ocean, South China Sea, and the Pacific to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Framed within the emerging field of blue humanities and building on posthumanist and decolonial perspectives, the conference explored the sea not as a passive space between empires or cultures, but as an active, more-than-human agent, one that shapes and is shaped by human and nonhuman actors. By focusing on oceanic histories, material entanglements, and maritime ecologies, the conference aimed to challenge dominant land-based narratives of civilisation, encounters, mobility, and sovereignty.
The conference opened with a keynote lecture by Serpil Oppermann of Cappadocia University, environmental philosopher and author of Blue Humanities: Storied Waterscapes in the Anthropocene (2023). The programme also included a guided visit to the Museo del Mare e della Navigazione Antica at the Castello di Santa Severa, led by its Director, Flavio Enei. Through its collections and reconstructions of shipwrecks, navigation technologies, and maritime life, the museum resonated strongly with many of the themes addressed throughout the conference.
The programme further featured the first European screening of Seaspeaker, a documentary by visual artist Parvathi Nayar, curator of the exhibition The Living Ocean at Dakshina Chitra Museum. The film follows S. Palayam, a traditional fisherman from Urur Olcott Kuppam on Chennai’s Besant Nagar Beach, who documents everyday oceanic data while reflecting on climate change and rapidly changing marine worlds. Watch the trailer here: Seaspeaker
Serpil Oppermann Cappadocia University
Keynote lecture Blue Humanities and the Agency of Water
Parvathi Nayar Director of Seaspeaker & Curator of The Living Ocean at Dakshina Chitra Museum, Chennai
Guest lecture Speaking for the Ocean
Dionisius Agius University of Exeter Sailing the Red Sea: Medieval Ships to Arabia
Anna Athanasopoulou Ghent University Liquid Naturecultures in Philostratus’ "Imagines"
Luci Attala University of Wales Trinity Saint David Listening to the Bubbles: How Water Answers in Indigenous Kogi Epistemology. Sharing Ways of Knowing through Relational and More-than-Human Histories
Serena Autiero Thammasat University From Block to Beam: Intermedial Motifs in Indian Ocean Wooden Doors
Annalisa Bocchetti University of Naples "L'Orientale" Sufi Ecologies of the Indian Ocean: Do Saints Ever Dwell Alone?
Chiara Caradonna Hebrew University of Jerusalem Relational Inhabiting. Towards a Fisher Ontology in Modern Italian Culture and Beyond
Elizabeth A. Cecil Florida State University The Lord of the Elements and the Eaglewood Goddess: Seascapes and Śaiva cosmologies in Early Vietnam
Matthew A. Cobb University of Wales Trinity Saint David Entangled Mariners and Placating the Sea across the Indian Ocean Space (Early to Mid-first Millennium CE)
Daniela De Simone Ghent University Storied Shells, Entangled Seascapes: The Śaṅkha in the Bay of Bengal
Elliott Fuller University of Toronto Why are Mollusks Good to Think with?
Mark Hudson Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology & Claudia Zancan University of Venice "Ca' Foscari"
The Liminal Sea: Danger, Death and Seascapes in Premodern Japan
Andreas N. Michalopoulos National and Kapodistrian University of Athens The Sea as Exilic Other in Ovid’s Exilic Poetry: Tomis as a More-than-Human Environment
Katelin Mikos University of Michigan The Sea, It Is Said, Never Gives Up Her Dead: Death at Sea in Archaic Greek Poetry
Joshua L. Reid, University of Washington Maintaining Relations with x̌ wəlč (Whulge) through the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott
Jeremy Simmons University of Chicago Beyond the Oceanic Plane: Towards a Multidimensional Blue Humanities
The conference was organised with the support of the Research Foundation–Flanders (FWO), with additional support from the Academia Belgica and the Museo del Mare e della Navigazione Antica.
FROM COAST TO COAST
Folklore and the Cultural Lives of the Western Indian Ocean
20–21 November 2025
University of Naples "L'Orientale"
This international conference brought together scholars at University of Naples "L'Orientale" to explore the dynamic cultural histories of the Western Indian Ocean through the lens of folklore.
Spanning regions from Eastern Africa and the Persian Gulf to the Middle East and western South Asia, the conference examined how oral traditions, ritual practices, music, material culture, and maritime narratives mediate cultural encounters, mobility, and historical memory across oceanic worlds. Framed through transdisciplinary perspectives from anthropology, history, literary studies, folklore, and material culture studies, the discussions highlighted folklore as a living archive through which communities narrate, negotiate, and contest their place within broader political, ecological, and historical contexts.
Particular attention was devoted to seafaring knowledge, maritime vocabularies, ritual performances, post-slavery memories, and the social lives of objects circulating across coastal and archipelagic worlds. The conference further explored how identities in motion generate alternative imaginaries and forms of resistance that challenge dominant historical narratives.
The programme concluded with the evening concert Singing the Sabir: Soundscapes of Maritime Frontiers by Stefano Saletti and his band at the Lega Navale Italiana. Celebrating Sabir, the historic Mediterranean maritime lingua franca, the performance echoed many of the conference’s themes through music, offering a fitting conclusion to two days dedicated to maritime worlds, mobility, and cultural entanglements across the sea.
Sadhana Naithani Jawaharlal Nehru University
Keynote lecture Waters Carry Shores. Cultural Loops and Folklore in Western Indian Ocean
Ananya Jahanara Kabir King's College London
Guest lecture Performing Creolisation's Archipelagic Memory: Quadrilles of the Western Indian Ocean
Tareq Alrabei Gulf University–Kuwait "The Sons of Sinbad": Orientalist and Modern Arabic Literary Representations of Maritime History in the Gulf
Serena Autiero Thammasat University Wooden Doors across the Indian Ocean: Tracing mercantile communities from South Southeast Asia to the Swahili Coast
Brenda E.F. Beck University of Toronto The Seven Pleiad Sisters: A Tale that May Have Found a Home in Tamil Nadu due to Arabian Sea Boat Traffic Four Millennia Ago
Mohammad Bin Naser Kuwait University Nautical Navigation: The Ecolinguistic Analysis of Kuwaiti Maritime Proverbs
Annalisa Bocchetti University of Naples "L'Orientale" Navigating Wonder: The Sindbad's Motif in Urdu Literary Networks
Stefania Cavaliere University of Naples L'Orientale Preliminary Notes on a Compendium of Nautical Phraseology from the Indian Subcontinent
Emilio Cocco University of Teramo and Jirayudh Sinthuphan Chulalongkorn University
The Lost Vessel: Exploring the Endangered Ocean-Based Life ofthe Moken in the Andaman Sea through the Lens of Symbolic Technology
Daniela De Simone Ghent University Where the Forest Meets the Sea: Material Culture From the Andaman
Islands and the Making of Oceanic Worlds
Cezary Galewicz Jagellonian University and Elena Mucciarelli University of Groningen
Songs of the sea, songs of the land: On two living archives of displacement from North Malabar
Shadi Kalantar University of Naples "L'Orientale" Boats of Iran: A Nautical Glossary
Sabir Badal Khan University of Naples "L'Orientale" Gwāt or "Wind-Spirits": Possession and Healing Rituals of Psychosomatic Disorders among the Baloch in Southern Pakistan and Southeastern Iran
Anupama Mohan IIT Jodhpur Charting the Blue Humanities: Oceanic Literatures and the Flows of History in a World-System Framework
Maryam Nourzaei Uppsala University Tracing Origins through Song: Afro-Baloch Lullabies of Sistan and Balochistan
Mette Rudvin University of Palermo Ancestral Memory in a Post-slavery Coastal Community in Pakistan: Recreating Sheedi Social Identity through Music
Lara Scaiola University of Naples "L'Orientale" Sufism at the Border: the Shared Legacy of Coastal Shrines in Sindh and Kutch
Burkhard Schnepel Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg Princess Beti: Shifting Existential Modes in the Early Modern, Archipelagic Indian Ocean World
Antonia Soriente and Horst Liebner University of Naples "L'Orientale" Naming the Ship and the Sea: Konjo Maritime Terminology as Folkloric Archive and Indian Ocean Epistemology
Christophe Vielle FNRS Saints Brigid and Genevieve in the Theatrical Folklore of Malabar: What They Tell Us
The conference was organised with the support of the University of Naples "L'Orientale" and Ghent University, with additional support from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), the Indian Embassy in Rome, the International Association for Mediterranean and Oriental Studies (IsMEO), and the Research Foundation–Flanders (FWO)
Lampedusa andata by Stefano Saletti and his band is a haunting Swahili rendition of the Our Father, in memory of all those who entrust their lives to the Mediterranean’s uncertain crossing carrying hope, courage, and grief into waters that too often do not return them.