Jatin Dua

I am a socio-cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on maritime piracy in the Indian Ocean and projects and processes of governance, law, and economy along the East African coast.  My current book project, Protectors of the Sea: Piracy and Economies of Capture in the Indian Ocean, explores maritime piracy in the Western Indian Ocean within frameworks of protection, risk and regulation by moving between the worlds of coastal communities in northern Somalia, maritime insurance adjustors in London, and the global shipping industry.

My second project, Navigating the Bab-el-Mandeb, focuses on the materiality and mobility of navigation, including technologies of risk calculation, credit extension, and the daily forms of circulation and governance that occur across the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, a key maritime chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. I'm conducting research for this project in Djibouti as part of a collaborative research grant involving an interdisciplinary group of ethnographers from anthropology, geography, and sociology to examine and compare trade chokepoints from around the world. 

I teach courses on the anthropology of law and regulation; oceanic studies; global capitalism; state and non-state violence; and a course on the various historical and contemporary practices that have been labeled “piracy” from maritime raiding to the moral economy of hacking.

Research Areas(s)

• Anthropology of Law and Regulation
• Political Economy
• Piracy 
• Infrastructure/Logistics
• Maritime Anthropology
• Indian Ocean
• Horn of Africa/East Africa

Affiliation(s)

• African Studies Center
• Center for South Asian Studies
• Anthropology and History Program
• Science, Technology and Society Program

Award(s)

• National Science Foundation Collaborative Research Proposal on Global Trade Chokepoints (Co-Principal Investigator Indian Ocean: Bab-el-Mandeb Strait)
• Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship
• Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Fellowship
• Wenner-Gren Doctoral Dissertation Fieldwork Award