Jesse Ransley

I am an anthropologist of seafaring and oceans, particularly of the Indian Ocean past and present.

I study the history and material culture of south Asian seafaring - from traditional boatbuilding and watery landscapes to lascars and piracy.

I'm interested in the embodied knowledges of seafaring, the materiality and temporality of oceans and the larger philosophical question of how we imagine and understand maritime space.

Or, as it was recently put to me: 'you do bodies on boats, don't you?'

Which is definitely true. Boats. People. Water.

I am currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southampton. Before joining Southampton, I worked as a maritime archaeologist for English Heritage and for a commercial archaeology unit in the UK. As a result, I also have long-term research interests in the politics and ethics of maritime archaeological heritage management.