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I am a historian affiliated with Leiden University in the Netherlands and Ashoka University in India. I was born and brought up in a small village in Kerala, southwest India. For several years now, I have been exploring the stories and histories of the Indian Ocean and Islamic worlds. My research interests also include the global history of law, Afro-Asian connections and the intellectual history of Islam. 

Currently I study the matriarchal Muslim communities of the Indian Ocean littoral from East Africa to South|East Asia, thanks to generous grants from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Earlier, I worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Dutch Institute in Morocco (NIMAR); International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS); and African Studies Centre, Leiden (ASCL). I received my PhD from the Leiden University Institute for History in 2016. Before this, I studied at the Centre for Historical Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India) for my M.A. and M.Phil. in Ancient Indian History, and at Darul Huda Islamic University and the University of Calicut (both in Kerala, India) for Bachelors.

I have written a book titled Islamic Law in Circulation (Cambridge University Press, 2022), edited and co-edited a couple of books and special issues, and have published articles in several peer-reviewed international journals. For a full list of my publications, see Books and Articles.