Sumit Mandal

works on transnational and transregional histories with an interest in cultural geographies of the Malay world. He is concerned with the ways in which cultural diversity and notions of insider/outsider are constituted. Mandal views the Malay world in terms of its connectedness to the Indian Ocean. His explorations of Malay texts, Muslim shrines (keramat), and creole Hadramis reveal sites of interaction that are meaningful from the transregional to the local scale. His examination of the writings of Abdullah al-Misri brings to light a world of multiple languages and translation, and the movement of ideas across great distances. Mandal's research on Muslim shrines uncovers layers of prior, animist and Hindu-Buddhist, spiritual landscapes. He is challenged, given the scarcity of records, to consider the shrines in Cape Town, South Africa as the built archives of transregional connections. His work on Hadramis reveals how a diasporic past can spur the renewal of transregional connections. Altogether, Mandal develops cultural geographies that depart from the familiar ethno-national terms to offer a complex and transregional vocabulary of belonging. His interests naturally extend to contemporary cultural politics. He studies sites of interaction - notably in the arts - in ethnicised contexts such as Malaysia and Indonesia. Mandal is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus.