Training Program

Technological Innovation and Cultural Integration in the Indian Ocean World

East China Normal University and Harvard-Yenching Institute
Co-sponsored by NYU Shanghai

June 1-7, 2026

This intensive training program is designed to provide doctoral candidates and early-career faculty with a rigorous, interdisciplinary understanding of the Indian Ocean world as a historically dynamic and contemporarily relevant maritime arena. Centering on technological innovation and cultural integration, the program examines how maritime technologies and cross-cultural interactions have shaped economic systems, political formations, and social worlds across the oceanic rim.

The program foregrounds a wide spectrum of technological developments, from premodern shipbuilding techniques, navigational knowledge, and maritime infrastructures to contemporary port facilities, logistics networks, and ocean-based connectivity. These technological trajectories are examined alongside patterns of cultural exchange, mobility, and encounter, tracing how ideas, practices, religious traditions, and communities circulated across the Indian Ocean in both premodern and modern contexts.

Adopting a (longue durée) perspective, the training program conceptualizes the Indian Ocean as a historically interconnected maritime space that links multiple seas, littoral zones, and coastal societies. Participants will engage with historical, archaeological, anthropological, and economic approaches, enabling a comparative analysis of patterns of continuity, rupture, and transformation across different temporal scales. Particular attention is given to how maritime perspectives complicate and challenge land-based and nation-state frameworks, offering alternative analytical lenses for understanding regional integration, mobility, and technological change in oceanic contexts.

Led by leading scholars in Indian Ocean studies, this program combines lectures, seminars, and collaborative discussions to equip participants with conceptual tools and methodological frameworks for studying oceanic histories. By emphasizing the maritime world as an analytical lens, it demonstrates how the Indian Ocean provides a distinctive vantage point for rethinking technological innovation, transregional connections, and the making of interconnected societies across Asia and beyond.

Program chairs
Zhu Ming, Department of History, East China Normal University

Sangeeta Banerji, Center for Global Asia, NYU Shanghai

Venue
Minhang Campus, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

NYU Shanghai, Pudong, Shanghai, China

Working language
English

Eligible applicants

• • Eligible candidates should either be currently pursuing a Ph.D. at an Asia-based institution or Asia-based young scholars who received their Ph.D. degree after 2020.
  • To make the HYI’s Asia-based training program available to as many young scholars as possible, former HYI training program participants are not eligible to apply.
  • A very small number of Ph.D. students and junior faculty members affiliated with institutions outside Asia may be recruited to participate; however, they will not be eligible to apply for the Harvard-Yenching Institute fellowship opportunity.

Application process
Prospective applicants should submit their applications to indian.ocean.cga@gmail.com no later than February 15, 2026. Please send your inquires to the same email address with any questions in the process of application. Your application packet should comprise the following:

1. 1. The completed application form [Download]
   2. One page of statement of research interest
   3. A writing sample (dissertation chapter is fine)
   4. One recommendation letter from your academic advisor (for Ph.D. candidates) [the letter can be sent directly to the above email, separate from the application package]

Selection Procedure: A selection committee will review all submissions. The final selection is scheduled to be announced by April 1, 2026. Only selected applicants will be informed by email. There is no application or participation fees. International participants will need to manage their own visa application and round-trip airfare. East China Normal University will supply any required documents to support visa applications. Additionally, the organizers will bear the expenses related to accommodation, lunch and dinner for all participants during the duration of the program.

Opportunities after completion of the 2026 program
Harvard-Yenching Institute visiting fellowship opportunities: upon the conclusion of the program, the Harvard-Yenching Institute will offer opportunities for a very small number of selected trainees to be awarded a Harvard-Yenching Institute fellowship for a one-year research stay at Harvard University during the 2027-2028 academic year.