Fernando Rosa

Fernando Rosa is a Brazilian anthropologist and historian who has worked on and lived in various Indian Ocean societies, particularly South Africa (Cape Town), India (Kerala and Goa), Peninsular Malaysia, Macau (China), and Indonesia. He has also lived and worked in Atlantic societies such as Brazil and parts of the Caribbean (including Martinique, Suriname, Aruba, and Curaçao). He is now a research affiliate with the English department, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Moreover, he has lived and carried out research for five years in Malaysia (mostly in Kuala Lumpur and Melaka). His mains fields are African studies and Indian Ocean studies. His research interests lie in the domain of oceanic intellectual networks and related languages (and their archives), as well as in processes of creolisation and cosmopolitanism. In his latest book, The Portuguese in the Creole Indian Ocean. Essays in Historical Cosmopolitanism (Palgrave, 2015), he revisits the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Creole port city through literary works in French, Indonesian, and Portuguese; historical cosmopolitanism in Kerala (Malabar Coast) in India; the linguistic work of Sebastião Dalgado on Konkani, Sanskrit, and Sri Lankan Indo-Portuguese Creole in early twentieth century Goa; the ethnography and history of Creole and Portuguese identities and languages in both Macau (China) and Melaka (Malaysia); and finally the intricacies and mutual connections between various sixteenth and seventeenth century texts in Arabic, Malay, and Portuguese and their respective authors, compilers, etc, in Goa, the Malabar Coast, and the Straits of Melaka. He also scrutinises the interlinked Indian Ocean and Mediterranean networks described in these texts.

Furthermore, he has carried out fieldwork among Myanmar refugees (the Mizo in particular) in Bukit Bintang, a cosmopolitan neighbourhood in Kuala Lumpur of Indian Ocean origin. He has a related book project, tentatively titled Kuala Lumpur Myanmar Metropolis. Cosmopolitanism in an Indian Ocean Postcolony. 

Recent Publication:

2015. The Portuguese in the Creole Indian Ocean. Essays in Historical Cosmopolitanism. Palgrave Indian Ocean World Series. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.