James Onley

James Onley is the Ahmed Seddiqi Chair in Gulf & Middle Eastern Studies and Professor of History. He specializes in the history and heritage of the Gulf region, the Gulf’s historical connections with South Asia, archives and archival digitization, and digital humanities. He is founding Editor of the Journal of Arabian Studies (Taylor & Francis/Routledge) and an Honorary Research Fellow at the IAIS, of which he has been a member since 2002. Between 2005 and 2012 he was Director of the Exeter Centre for Gulf Studies. Before joining AUS, he was Director of Historical Research at Qatar National Library, with responsibility for the Qatar Digital Library and QNL’s relationship with archival partners. Prior to entering academia, he served in the Canadian Army for 12 years and was a UN peacekeeper in Iraq at the end of the Iran–Iraq War (1988).

• The Gulf region (Arabia, Iran, Iraq), 17^th–21^st century
  • Heritage (museums)
  • History
  • Culture
  • Society
  • Politics
  • Merchant families
  • Ruling families
  • British involvement
• India, 17^th–20^th century
  • British involvement
  • Merchant families
  • Ruling families
  • Culture
• The Indian Ocean, 17^th–20^th century
  • Merchant networks
  • Cultural and political transnationalism (especially foreign influences on Arabia)
  • British involvement
• European imperialism / world empires, 16^th–20^th century
  • Britain and the Middle East (especially the Gulf region, Yemen, and Egypt)
  • Britain and India
  • Local cooperation and collaboration in the maintenance of empire
  • Culture and empire (such as the Westernization of indigenous elites)
• Diasporas, 16^th–21^st century
  • British, Indian, and Iranian communities in Arabia
  • British, Arab, and Indian communities in Iran
  • British, Arab, and Iranian communities in India