New Publication by IOWC Researchers

We are incredibly happy to announce that IOWC Research Assistant, Lilia Scudamore, and Project Manager, Philip Gooding, have just had their article “Between meteorology, waterworks, and race: drought and disease in the 1880s British Straits Settlements,” published in Water History.

Their article investigates the links between public health and drought in the British Straits Settlements (Singapore, Malacca, Province Wellesley, and Penang). It builds on Scudamore’s presentation at the Canadian Historical Association Conference held at McGill in 2024, which Gooding chaired, and it contributes to the IOWC’s Partnership, Appraising Risk. The article stresses how central policies and infrastructure have the capacity to both exacerbate and mitigate against the effects of drought on public health – an important intervention in the context of global warming’s effects on regional climates in the Indian Ocean World. To read more, see: 

Lilia Scudamore and Philip Gooding, ‘Between meteorology, waterworks, and race: drought and disease in the 1880s British Straits Settlements,’ Water History (2025): https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-025-00374-9

Alternatively, if your institution does not provide you with access, please reach out to Philip Gooding (philip.gooding@mcgill.ca), who has a limited number of author copies that he will be happy to share with you.

IOWC in Print

The Indian Ocean World Centre has recently been profiled in Le Délit, McGill’s French-language student newspaper! Check it out on newsstands around campus or online here:

New Collaborative Publications

In line with the IOWC’s pedagogical commitments to getting McGill undergraduate students hands-on research experience, Project Manager Philip Gooding and undergraduate Research Assistant Nadia Fekih have two recent publications related to their ongoing research into the environmental history of early Dutch colonization in South Africa:

• A peer reviewed journal article: Philip Gooding and Nadia Fekih, ‘A climate history of early Dutch settlement at Cape Town, 1652-62.’ Journal of Southern African Studies, 50, 1 (2024), 49-68.
• An academic blog post: Nadia Fekih, ‘Digitizing and Visualizing Climate in Early Cape Colony,’ NiCHE (12 Sep. 2024)

This research project illustrate several key research commitments at the IOWC: the importance of historical documentary sources for climate reconstruction, the significance of human-environment interaction as a catalyst for historical continuity and change, and the student training and participation in research.

Nadia and Philip also discuss their research collaboration on two episodes of the Indian Ocean World Podcast:

• The 2024 Research Roundup
• The 2023 Research Roundup

JIOWS now at Johns Hopkins University Press

The Indian Ocean World Centre is excited to announce that the Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies has recently joined the Johns Hopkins University Press under a co-publication agreement with the McGill University Library. This is a major development for the IOWC, for the JIOWS, and for the field of Indian Ocean World studies as a whole. Our own Dr. Philip Gooding, Project Manager at the IOWC and Associate Editor of the JIOWS, has a blog post on the Johns Hopkins University Press website that explains the new partnership and how it will enhance the great work done at the Journal.

The newest edition of the JIOWS, the first published under the new agreement, is available on Project Muse, where it will soon be joined by the back catalogue currently available through the McGill University Library. Submission guidelines are available here. The new relationship with Johns Hopkins does not shift the JIOWS’s mandate as a platinum open access journal, meaning that neither authors nor readers are charged any fees. Authors will also continue to maintain copyright to their work, allowing them to rework it for future publication, under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.