Peter Nicholls

Peter Nicholls is a UK-based historian of mixed British and Seychellois Creole heritage whose work focuses on Indian Ocean Creole history, memory, and oceanic worldviews. His research merges archival study with Creole and Indian Ocean ways of knowing, and has reshaped understandings of the Seychelles’ early history, colonization, peopling and Creolization. His PhD at the University of Kent, Canterbury, supported by the UK Research Council, identified the Seychelles as a crucial mid-way recovery station for slave ships trafficking captives from Madagascar, the Comoros, East Africa and India to Mauritius, Réunion, the Cape and the Caribbean.

Peter is the author of Maroons of the Seychelles (2022) and The Door to the Coast of Africa (2018), and his work on maroons, inter-island movement, shipwrecks, traditional music and origins along the ship routes has become widely cited in Indian Ocean studies. He has worked as Historical Consultant on the documentary Listwar Sesel, lectured at the Universities of Kent, Seychelles and Mauritius, and contributed to numerous creative and community projects exploring oceanic heritage.

In 2025 he presented original research at UNESCO’s Routes of Enslaved Peoples Conference and now works on the Seychelles Origins Project, the Thames Estuary Sunken Slaveships Project and a Mauritius-based UNESCO initiative mapping significant sites of the Indian Ocean slave trade. His research interests have led him to explore archeological sites in the Indian Ocean, above and below water - including shipwrecks and the supposed base of pirate Olivier Levasseur, and his research into oceanic mythology, mermaids and saltwater cosmologies have led to numerous collaborations with artists and researchers across disciplines.

 

Language spoken: English