Visual & Material Cultures
Published Research on the Illuminated Qur’ans of the East African Coast
Forging Swahili Muslim Style: Material Culture from Pate Island (ca.1750-ca.1900), in Africa: Beyond Borders, ed. F. Flood, H. von Heese, and P. Meir, Journal18, Issue 19 (2024).
Dispersal, Decolonization, and Dominance: African Muslim Objects from the Sultanate of Witu (1858-1923), in Decolonizing Islamic Art in Africa: New Approaches to Muslim Expressive Cultures, ed. A. Miller, Intellect Books (2024), pp. 21–54.
A Corpus of 18th-19th century Illuminated Qur’an Manuscripts from Coastal East Africa, Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 14:2-4 (2023), pp. 356-395.
The Faza Qurʾan: Three Nineteenth-century Illuminated Manuscripts from Coastal East Africa, Journal of Qur’anic Studies 24: 2 (2019), pp. 21-47.
The Siyu Qur’ans: Illuminated Qur’an Manuscripts from Coastal East Africa, in Approaches to the Qur’an in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. Z. Hirji, Oxford University Press (2019), pp. 431-472.
A Qur’an manuscript from coastal East Africa, in Smarthistory (2023) and in Art of Africa, Khan Academy.
Islamic Manuscripts in Eastern Africa: A Conversation with Sana Mirza and Zulfikar Hirji on the Qur’ans of the Swahili Coast and an Ethiopian Qur’an from Harar, in Hidden Stories: Books Along the Silk Road Project, University of Toronto & Aga Khan Museum (2022).
Published Research on Art
Faisal Anwar’s Fragile Futurism: Meditations on a Common Sky, in CommonSky, ed. Z. Hirji, Artistic Xploratorium in collaboration with South Asia Institute (Chicago), (2025), pp. 4–7.
Muslim Life in the Digital Age: The Art of Ali Kazimi, Faisal Anwar, Jamelie Hassan, and Fareena Chanda, in MENA/SWANA Diasporic Art in Canada, ed. T. El-Sheikh, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, Volume 10 (2024), pp. 21-51.
Speculative Futures of Objects, Podcast series for Uncontainable Collections, in collaboration with Lillian O’Brien Davis and Clara Halpern, Art Gallery of York University (2024).
The Dialogic Exhibition: The Arts of African Muslims (Co-authored with P. Bentley), in Made for the Eyes of One Who Sees: Canadian Contributions to the Study of Islamic Art and Archaeology, ed. M. Milwright & E. Baboula, McGill-Queen’s University Press (2022), pp. 351-75.
Published Research on East Africa & Indian Ocean Visual and Material Cultures
Architects of Time: Coloniality, Clocktowers, and Calendars on the East African Coast, in Architectures of Colonialism: Constructed Histories, Conflicting Memories, ed. V. Egbers, C. Kamleithner, Ö. Sezer, and Skedzuhn-Safir, De Gruyter-Birkhäuser (2024), pp. 59–75.
The Kofia Tradition of Zanzibar: The Implicit and Explicit Discourses of Men’s Head-dress in an Indian Ocean Society, in Textiles in Indian Ocean Societies, ed. R. Barnes, RoutledgeCurzon (2005), pp. 68-84.
Arts of the Indian Ocean Community Engagement Project: As part of the Arts of the Indian Ocean Conference held in Toronto in 2024, community members currently residing in Toronto (Canada) shared personal objects/collections/art works with connections to places around the Indian Ocean littoral including China, India, Malaysia, and Africa. The videos below capture four of these stories.
