Marjan Wardaki specializes in the history of science. She will be joining the Department of History in the fall semester of 2024.
Professor Wardaki is a historian of the Global South, with research interest in the history of knowledge, empire, and migration. Her research analyzes the formation of diasporic scientific communities, considering specifically the role of migrants in the circulation of scientific objects, ideas, and practices across Empire.
She is currently working on her book manuscript, Decolonial Science: South Asian Migrants in interwar Germany and the Making of Modern Afghanistan, which examines the relationship between decolonization, science, and Islam in colonial and postcolonial South Asia. Her previous article in Modern Asian Studies dealt with lithographic technologies in the Rediscovery of Indo-Buddhist Fine Arts among migrants in interwar Germany. Works in progress include several articles on Indian vernacular medicine, the science of photography and technical manuals of the camera among an Urdu-speaking photographers, and the migration of seeds across the Western Himalayas. Her recent essay for the Getty Research Institute analyzed albumen prints of British scientific practices in 19th century Afghanistan.
Marjan holds a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in European and South Asian history. She is joining Washington University from Yale University.