Material Memory and Identity in the Goan Diaspora (1880-1950)

contact: g.de.souza@fu-berlin.de

Gayatri de Souza is a doctoral research fellow at the at the graduate school for Global Intellectual History at Freie Universität and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She holds a Master's in Transcultural Studies from Heidelberg University and a Bachelor's in History from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University. 

Gayatri's project examines the constructions of home and belonging of the Goan diasporic community between Bombay and East Africa during the anti-colonial nationalist movements in Goa, India, and Kenya (1900-1963). Her study is located within different ongoing discourses; the role of emotions in processes of diasporic community formation, the continuing contestations on the ‘idea of Goa’ in the different locations of the diasporic communities, the contrasting dynamics of Portuguese and British colonialism in East Africa, and the sustained debates between the local and the global in global history and diaspora studies.