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      • Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Pakistan
        • Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Pakistan
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    Mariam Sabri

    Assistant Professor

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    Introduction

    Dr. Mariam Sabri is a historian of science, medicine, technology and the environment in South Asia and the littoral Indian Ocean world (1500-2000 CE). She joined the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as Assistant Professor in August 2025.

    Her first monograph (in progress), Time and Clime: The Exact Sciences, Environment and Empire in Early Modern South Asia, contends that astronomy was the bedrock of early modern sovereignty in South Asia enabling control of multiple temporalities, crafting narratives of cosmic truth and configuring conceptions of the environment. The project offers the first critical history of science, technology and empire for early modern South Asia by triangulating astronomical treatises, peasant poetry, art and architecture with administrative manuals, economic records and official chronicles.

    Dr. Sabri's second monograph (also in progress), People's Particles: Symmetry, Socialism and Science in the Cold War Era, argues that the field of particle physics was transformed from an elite enterprise to an international implement by a curious cast of international epistemic agents who speculatively shifted the theoretical thrust on symmetry. Prominent particle physicists such as Abdus Salam, Leon Lederman, Philip Anderson, Samuel Goudsmit, Homi J. Bhabha as well as peripheral figures--Stevan Dedijer and Gertrude Golhaber--instituted, instructed and enacted these theoretical transformations in convergence and civility rather conflict. The levied socialist sensibilties juxtaposed to values and views of both American governance and Soviet statecraft. I deploy a trans-Atlantic archive of scientific publications, correspondences and editorials, speeches and lectures, conference proceedings, oral histories and visual sources (photographs and documentaries) to irradiate an obscure yet imperative phase of Cold War physics' history.

    Her third monograph project tentatively entitled, Crocodile Commerce: Race, Religion and Ritual Technologies in the Arabia Sea (1700-2000) studies how notions of blackness, religion and technology informed and transformed the ecology and economy of the eastern Indian Ocean. Her research study focuses on the cultural, intellectual and environmental history of Afro-Pakistani communities living in the vicinity of the Mangho Pir shrine as well as the Lyari neighborhood of Karachi. These communities play a vibrant role in the culture, economy and politics of the city. Methodologically, Dr. Sabri interweaves quantiative and qualitative history approaches. She triangulates data analysis of mercantile and demographic records pertaining to these communities with oral history interviews, visual sources (photography, film and architecture).

    Education

    • B.A. in International Relations with a minor in Digital Media Production, Mount Holyoke College, 2010
    • M.A. in International Studies with a focus on South Asian Studies, University of Washington Seattle, 2017
    • PhD in History with a Designated Emphasis in Science and Technology Studies, University of California Berkeley, 2023

    Current areas of teaching

    • Histories of Science, Environment and Capitalism
    • Introduction to Scientific Inquiry
    • What is Globalization?
    • Indian Ocean Worlds
    • Radical Politics of South Asia

    Research interests

    • Early Modern Science
    • Colonial & Postcolonial Science
    • History of the Exact Sciences
    • History of Everyday Life
    • Environmental History
    • Comparative Empires
    • History of the British Empire
    • History of Gender & Sexuality
    • History of Capitalism
    • Global Intellectual History
    • South Asian Studies
    • Science & Technology Studies

    Professional associations

    • American Historical Association
    • Association for Asian Studies
    • History of Science Society
    • Society for the History of Technology

    Awards and honours

    • Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund, 2022
    • Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, UC Berkeley, 2021
    • Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, National Science Foundation, 2021
    • Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, Fulbright-Hays, 2020
    • International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Science Research Council, 2020
    • Foreign Language and Area Studies Academic Year Award, Arabic, Berkeley, CA (2019-2020)
    • Critical Language Scholarship, Arabic, Jordan Language Academy, Amman, Jordan (2019)
    • Graduate Fellowship, Center for the Study of Human Values, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (2017) (declined)
    • Foreign Language and Area Studies Academic Year Award, Persian, Seattle, WA (2016-17)
    • Foreign Language and Area Studies Summer Award, Persian, Madison, WI (2016)
    • Foreign Language and Area Studies Summer Award, Persian, Seattle, WA (2016) (declined)

    Created on:11/20/2025 Last modified:11/20/2025

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