Julia Stephens is an Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University. Her research explores how law has shaped religion, family, and economy in colonial and post-colonial South Asia and in the wider Indian diaspora. Her first book, Governing Islam: Law, Empire, and Secularism in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2018), moves between official archives of colonial law and wider spheres of public debates, bringing into conversation vernacular pamphlets and newspapers, Urdu fatwas, colonial legal cases, and legislative deliberations. Drawing on these wide-ranging legal archives, the book explores how colonial law constructed a new religious/secular binary that was deeply influential, and vibrantly contested inside and outside colonial courts.
Currently, she is working on a project on inheritance and diasporic Indian families, tentatively titled Worldly Afterlives: Death and Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. The project traces the lives of Indian migrants by looking at the assets they left behind after their deaths. These estates ranged from mercantile fortunes to a few treasured personal effects, including letters, jewelry, or a pocketful of receipts for small debts owed by fellow travelers. This archive provides a window into the intersecting histories of diasporic families and the formation of state bureaucracies for managing global flows of labor and capital.