Tamara Fernando

Tamara Fernando is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Stony Brook University, State University of New York (SUNY). She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge (2022) and specializes in the environmental, labor, and scientific histories of the Indian Ocean world, with regional focus on Sri Lanka, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Her research interests include:

• Environmental History of the Indian Ocean
• Colonial Science and Knowledge Production
• Maritime Labor Systems
• Transregional and Global History
• History of Empire and Ecology

Her current book projects are Shallow Blue Empire: Knowing the Littoral across the Indian Ocean, a transnational history of the pearling industry, and Submarine Futures: Science and Expertise in the Indian Ocean 1872–2004, which explores shipwrecks, nuclear submarines, and deep-sea ports as sites of scientific and political engagement. Her work combines archival research with interdisciplinary methodologies from science and technology studies, environmental humanities, and postcolonial theory.

Her recent publications in journals such as Past & Present, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and History of Science examine topics like the mapping of oyster beds, multispecies histories of pearl fisheries, and the entanglement of disease and labor under colonialism. She also engages in public scholarship through outlets like Hypocrite Reader, Himal Southasian, and Borderlines, where she writes on settler tourism, water governance, and colonial legacies in Sri Lanka.

She has no listed scientific awards in the provided texts. She advises students, though no current advisees are named. Her collaborative work includes co-authored articles on mollusks and human difference, and evolution in South Asia.

She is affiliated with:

• Stony Brook University, Department of History
• Personal website: tamarasfernando.com
• Twitter: @TamaraFernando3