Ayesha Hussain

Afterlives of Slavery: Cultural Heritage, Memory, and Marginalization of the Sheedi
Community in South Asia

While the Atlantic slave trade has been extensively studied by scholars, the Indian Ocean slave trade particularly the enslavement of people from East Africa has received comparatively less scholarly attention. Yet the descendants of these enslaved Africans form a significant African diaspora population across western South Asia and throughout the peripheries of the Indian Ocean, and they continue to survive and maintain their distinct identities today. One such group is the Sheedis (also called Siddis) in Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka. They are the descendants of African slaves who were brought to the subcontinent as early as the eighth century onwards. The community traces its ancestry to Bantu-speaking populations of Southeast Africa.

My project explores how African heritage has been preserved, transformed, or erased among Sheedi communities living along the Indian Ocean coast of South Asia. It focuses on the ways cultural knowledge is transmitted through oral histories, everyday practices, and collective memory, paying particular attention to how communities interpret and engage with their historical connections to East Africa.

Central to the study is an examination of how Sheedi individuals navigate differing understandings of their past. It investigates how references to East African slave ancestry are embraced, reinterpreted, or at times downplayed in everyday life, and how these choices are shaped by social factors such as class, gender, generation, and regional context.

In addition, the project investigates the structural conditions that shape the contemporary lives of Sheedi communities. It situates ongoing experiences of social marginalization and concentration in low-wage labor within longer histories of enslavement, racialization, and postcolonial economic inequality. At the same time, it highlights the forms of agency exercised by community members, including strategies of adaptation, resistance, and cultural assertion. By examining both constraints and possibilities, the study seeks to understand how Sheedi communities navigate and challenge the unequal power relations embedded in their historical and socio-economic contexts.

2019–2026    
PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Bonn, Germany

2014–2017                 
MBA in Corporate Social Responsibility and NGO Management

2002–2005                 
M.Phil. in Anthropology, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan

1998–2000                 
M.Sc. in Anthropology, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan

since April 2026
Postdoctoral Researcher, Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS), University of Bonn

July 2024–March 2026
Project Associate, International Organization for Migration (IOM) Germany

October 2019–June 2024
Research Associate in Research Area D, Labor and Spatiality, Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS), University of Bonn

August 2017–February 2018  
Research Fellow, United Nations Volunteer Bonn (HQ) Results Based Management, developing Theory of change and logic model for the strategic framework of UNV

October 2015–December 2015    
Research Assistant with Welt Hunger Hilfe, Country Office Pakistan on "Gender responsive Monitoring and Evaluation of development projects of WHH in Pakistan"

August 2006–December 2006   
Research Assistant and Local Microfinance specialist, with Asian Development Bank Manila in Pakistan on the study "The demand for microinsurance in Pakistan"

April 2002–September 2003   
Research Anthropologist with Population Council on Qualitative part of the national level study "Unwanted pregnancy and post abortion complications in Pakistan"

July 2000–December 2000   
Research Assistant with Quaid-e-Azam University on a project entitled "Empirical Comparative Study of Culture-Area of Punjab"

2023–2024

• Coordination Team for PhD Forum, BCDSS
• Dependency Blog Editorial Team, BCDSS
• Deputy Representative for Doctoral Candidates, BCDSS

2020

• Coordinator for working group Contemporary Asymmetrical Dependencies (CAD), BCDSS