Gianni Sievers (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is a historian of modern and early modern South Asia. His research interests lie at the intersections of cultural and intellectual history, Islamic studies, sound studies, and ethnomusicology. He is particularly interested in the history of Islam, technology, and the performing arts in South Asia.

Gianni is currently working on his first book project, tentatively titled “Auditory Culture in Transition: Muslims, Music, and Nationalism in Colonial North India, c. 1857-1947.” Building on his dissertation and drawing on a range of multi-lingual primary sources in Urdu, Persian, and Arabic alongside visual materials and early sound recordings, it explores the role of sound and music in the lives of North Indian Muslims under British colonial rule and the formation of both communal and national identities in modern South Asia.

As a postdoctoral fellow at Utrecht University, Gianni is part of an ongoing research project on Islamic sensory history, led by Prof. Dr. Christian Lange. In connection with this project, Gianni's research explores how Muslims in Mughal and colonial India conceptualized and recalibrated the senses, and how Islamic legal discourses about such issues as the permissibility of music and dance evolved in different cultural and socio-political contexts. Currently, he is also working on the multi-author handbook Islamic Sensory History, Vol. 3: 1500-2000 (forthcoming with Brill) and he is co-organizing a series of conferences on Islamic sensory history.

Gianni has received research grants from the Social Science Research Council and the University of Pennsylvania. His current work is supported by the Ammodo foundation and the Dutch Research Council's Vici Grant “Rosewater, Nightingale, and Gunpowder: A Sensory History of the Islamic World, 1500-1900” (RONIGU, 2023-2028).