Podcast with Julia Stephens, author of “Worldly Afterlives: Tracing Family Trails Between India and Empire”
The British Empire covered much of the world during the 19th century–and each time someone moved through it, they left a paper trail in their wake.
Julia Stephens, the author of Worldly Afterlives: Tracing Family Trails Between India and Empire (Princeton University Press, 2025), uses that archive of documents to try to piece together the stories of Indian migrants that traveled the empire throughout their lives–and, in some cases, after their lives were over. Julia joins us today to talk about her book and her attempt to find a different approach to studying these histories: Figures like Kuala Lumpur magnate Thamboosamy Pillai, Zanzibar–Bombay matriarch Jambai, and the elusive sailor John Muhammad.
Worldly Afterlives was reviewed by Prarthana Prakash for the ARB in March 2026. You can read the review here.
Julia Stephens is associate professor of history at Rutgers University. She is also the author of Governing Islam: Law, Empire, and Secularism in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
