University Directory

Amber H. Abbas, PhD

(she/her/hers)

Professor

Amber Heather Abbas PhD

Department

Office

Barbelin 112O

Phone

610-660-1744
Contact

Dr. Abbas' research focuses on the period of transition associated with the 1947 Independence and Partition of India, and its particular impact on South Asian Muslims. This research considers questions of state, nation and identity-building as well as methodological questions about the role of oral history as a source for understanding the past. Dr. Abbas' research confronts questions of meaning and its impact in people's lives. Lately, these interests have encouraged her to expand her work to explore the South Asian Diaspora in the United States. In this work, she works closely with The South Asian American Digital Archive as a consultant and oral historian. In addition to dozens of oral interviews with men and women in South Asia, and the United States, Dr. Abbas has consulted archives in the United States, England, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.

    • 2012 Doctor of Philosophy: Department of History, The University of Texas at Austin
    • 2006 Master of Arts: Department of History, UT Austin
    • 1999 Bachelor of Arts: Comparative Area Studies, Duke University
    • 2026- present Professor of History, Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, PA
    • 2023- 2026 Director, The Nealis Program in Asian Studies
    • 2019- 2026 Associate Professor of History, Saint Joseph’s University
    • 2012- 2019 Assistant Professor of History, Saint Joseph’s University
    • “Meeting the Moment: How “Listening to Learn’ Opened Discussion on Gaza,” Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education, May 10, 2025. Co-authored with Susan Liebell. https://conversationsmagazine.org/meeting-the-moment-how-listening-to-learn-opened-discussion-on-gaza-e3677864ec12
    • “Experiencing the Past: Oral History as World History,” World History Connected, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2022): 1-31. https://doi.org/10.13021/whc.v19i3
    • Partition’s First Generation: Space, Place and Identity in Muslim South Asia, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2021).
    • “Death, Distance, and the Digital World,” in The Deathbed, Nursing Clio, July 16, 2020. https://nursingclio.org/2020/07/16/death-distance-and-the-digital-world/
    • “Masculinity and the Muslim University in the 1940s,” in Oxford of the East: Aligarh Muslim University 1920-2020 Centenary Commemorative Volume, eds. Juhi Gupta and Abdur Raheem Kidwai (New Delhi: Viva Books Pvt., Ltd.: 2020), 1-19.
    • “A Living Legacy: Sir Sayyid Today,” in The Cambridge Companion to Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan, ed. Yasmin Saikia and M. Raisur Rahman (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 255-272.
    • “Belonging and the Beginning of the Past in Pakistan,” in Hidden Histories: Religion and Reform in South Asia, eds. Syed Akbar Hyder and Manu Bhagavan. (Delhi: Primus Books, 2018), 27-47.
    • “A Good Death,” in Tides Magazine, South Asian American Digital Archive, August 18, 2018. https://www.saada.org/tides/article/a-good-death
    • “Disruption and Belonging: Aligarh University and the Changing Meaning of Place Since Partition,” The Oral History Review Vol. 44, No. 2 (Sept. 2017): 301-321.
    • “Sifting Through History,” in Tides Magazine, South Asian American Digital Archive, May 28, 2015. https://www.saada.org/tides/article/20150528-4168
    • “The Solidarity Agenda: Aligarh Students and the Demand for Pakistan,” South Asian History and Culture Special Issue: Defying the Perpetual Exception: Culture and Power in South Asian Islam, Vol. 5, No. 2 (2014): 147-162.
    • “The Pedagogy of the Archive: South Asian America in the University Classroom,” The Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Summer 2014): 61-66.
    • “For the Sound of Her Voice,” The Appendix: Out Loud, Vol. 1 No. 3. July 2013.
    • “Listening in on South Asian America,” in Tides Magazine, South Asian American Digital Archive, December 5, 2011. https://www.saada.org/tides/article/20111205-514
    • “Thinking Through Partition.” SAGAR 17 (2007): 1-10.
    • 2025 Faculty Merit Award for Service, Saint Joseph’s University
    • 2022 Faculty Merit Award for Research, Saint Joseph’s University
    • 2022 Co-author with Samip Mallick, Andrew W. Mellon Change Capital Grant for Digital Humanities ($1 million), Awarded to the South Asian American Digital Archive.
    • 2019 Fall Semester Sabbatical, Saint Joseph’s University
    • 2018 Faculty Merit Award for Teaching, Saint Joseph’s University.
    • 2015 S.S. Pirzada Dissertation Prize in Pakistan Studies. Institute for South Asia Studies, The University of California, Berkeley.
    • 2014 International Seminar on Decolonization. National History Center funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Washington, DC.
    • 2013 Summer Research Grant, Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia.
    • 2012 Departmental Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Department of History, UT Austin.
    • 2011-2012 Churchill Fellowship, British Studies, UT Austin.
    • 2010 Departmental Research Fellowship, Department of History, UT Austin
    • 2009 American Institute of Bangladesh Studies Junior Research Fellowship
    • 2008 American Institute of Indian Studies Junior Research Fellowship (declined)
    • 2008 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship
    • 2008 Departmental Research Fellowship, Department of History, UT Austin
    • 2008 Critical Language Scholarship for Intensive Language Institutes (Urdu), National Security Language Initiative, United States Department of State.
    • 2008 Summer FLAS Fellowship for language study in India (Urdu), South Asia Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. (declined)
    • 2007 South Asia Institute Travel Grant, South Asia Institute at UT Austin.
    • 2007 Jan Carleton Perry Prize for Best Master’s Thesis “Thinking Through Partition: Finishing the Narrative,” Department of History, UT Austin.
    • 2007 Nominated: Outstanding Master's Thesis/Report Awards for 2006-2007, UT Austin.
    • 2007 Churchill Fellowship, British Studies, UT Austin.
    • 2004- 2006 Pre-Emptive Fellowship, Department of History, UT Austin.
    • 1999-2000 Fulbright Full Grant in Pakistan, Institute of International Education, United States Department of State.

  • As a historian, my research encompasses three major strands: History of South Asia; Oral History; and South Asian Migration. These three areas of research are interlinked in significant ways, and each is directly connected to my teaching at Saint Joseph’s University. My primary regional field of expertise is the History of South Asia, with a focus on Islam, Muslim societies, and the 1947 Indian partition. I investigate questions of nationalism, belonging, and identity in the subcontinent using oral history as a research methodology. My commitment to teaching oral history methods led to my engagement with history of South Asian American Migration. I have trained students and practitioners to conduct oral history interviews with South Asian Americans, maintaining my links to research and scholarship on South Asia, and expanding it to diaspora communities. I work closely with the South Asian American Digital Archive, a leader in the documentation and preservation of the stories of South Asians in the United States. I have frequently shared my research and pedagogy at gatherings of specialists, for the community, and at major meetings of professional organizations, and regularly serve as a peer-reviewer for several top-tier journals including The Oral History Review, The Journal of Urdu Studies and Modern Asian Studies.