Professor John P Cooper (he/him/his/himself)

Welcome!

I am a maritime archaeologist and ethnographer, as well as an Arabicist, with a principal research interest in maritime communities of the Arab and Islamic worlds and Indian Ocean—past and present. My approach is collaborative, co-creative and multidisciplinary, and combines archaeology, material culture, ethnography and text. 

My research work has extended across the Nile (Egypt & Sudan), the Red Sea & Gulf of Aden (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Djibouti, Eritrea), the Arabian-Persian Gulf (Bahrain, Qatar, UAE) and the wider Indian Ocean (Tanzania, India, Sri Lanka). My recent projects have investigated boatbuilding traditions in West Bengal, India (EMKP); maritime heritage in Tanzania (AHRC), including artisanal watercraft of the Zanzibar Archipelago (British Academy/Honor Frost Foundation); and community heritage in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. I am currently working on interpreting a Gujarati chart of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Click on the tab above to see my publications. 

I am based at the University's Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies, where I am a member of the Centre for Islamic Archaeology and Centre for Gulf Studies. I am also the Institute's Director of Global Engagement. Across Faculty, I am on on the steering committee of the University's Heritage@Exeter network, and a member of the ExeterMarine network.

I supervise graduate students on a broad range of maritime and heritage topics, including martime and Islamic archaeology, nautical technologies, Arabic travel, cartography, geographical and navigational literature, coastal heritage, Arabic linguistics and nautical lexica.

I teach archaeology and a little Arabic in the Institute.

My socials are: @maraakib on X, Instagram and Facebook.