Conference session

How do we reclaim belonging when our history has been narrated for us? Listening Across Empires is a creative-historical performance that blends storytelling, poetry, and archival research to reimagine the Thomas Christian diaspora of South India—an ancient community tracing its origins to the apostle Thomas. Long before European colonial expansion, these Christians were part of global networks stretching across Africa, Persia, and East Asia. When empire recast their story as one of “conversion,” much of that layered past was muted. This session listens for what the archives forgot. Through lyrical fragments, historical sources, and family memory, it explores how storytelling can become a method of repair, an ethical practice that reconnects history, community, and imagination. The session unfolds as a hybrid reading and talk, interweaving narrative, poetry, and historical reflection. Drawing on research from African, Indian Ocean, Latin American, and Eastern European contexts, the presentation places the Thomas Christians within a wider landscape of ancient communities negotiating imperial and ideological pressures. It invites scholars, artists, educators, policymakers, and community members, especially those working at the intersections of migration, faith, history, and public storytelling, to reconsider Christianity not as a singular Western inheritance, but as a network of interconnected traditions with deep non-Western roots. Participants will leave with practical insight into how creative research can foster dialogue across difference, with renewed attention to the power of listening in public life.