Access to Knowledge

Building a shared digital and material knowledge infrastructure.

Activities include:

• Collaborative digitisation of archives (with attention to intellectual property rights and regional equity)
  

• Digital index for private collections
  

• Pluralistic, decolonial archives
  

• Integrated digital humanities portal
  

• IIAS Newsletter contributions on Indian Ocean themes

• Shared libraries, syllabi, playlists, oral histories, and course materials

Pedagogy & Institutional Capacity Building

Strengthening the teaching and institutional landscape of Indian Ocean Studies.

Activities include:

• Joint courses and shared teaching arrangements
  

• Faculty exchanges
  

• Administrator-level collaborations for long-term programme building
  

• Syllabus and curriculum development
  

• Designing models for regionally grounded centres or programmes

• Support for gender equity, "ungendering," and North–South balance

Training Exchanges

Supporting graduate students, early-career researchers, and practitioners.

Activities include:

• Summer/winter schools (rotating annually across regions)
  

• Mentorship networks linking senior and junior scholars
  

• Comparative research workshops
  

• Innovation Labs / peer-presenting spaces
  

• Field-based training (heritage sites, coastal ecologies, urban spaces, climate-change zones)

• Joint faculty-led thematic clusters (heritage, environment, methodologies)

Public Engagement & Cultural Collaboration

Bridging academic and civic knowledge.

Activities include:

• Partnerships with museums, artists, film festivals (e.g., Zanzibar Film Festival)

• Pop-up exhibitions and mobile heritage labs

• Public history initiatives

• Community-led workshops (weaving, cuisine, music, storytelling)
  Ocean-based or coastal field programmes

• Local capacity-building: working with NGOs, activists, elders, and artisans