Student Spotlight: Shaheen Alikhan on Recovering Overlooked Histories

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For Shaheen Alikhan, architectural history provided a way to bring together a lifelong fascination with history and a deep interest in the built environment. Today, as a PhD candidate in the UVA School of Architecture's Constructed Environment program, she investigates how the transatlantic slave trade shaped the waterfronts, cities, and landscapes across the Atlantic world, revealing histories that remain embedded in place.  

Alikhan's path to academia was far from conventional. A former carpenter and transfer student from Piedmont Virginia Community College, she arrived at UVA searching for a discipline that matched her intellectual curiosity. During an advising meeting prior to transfer, Professor Shiqiao Li introduced her to architectural history, a field she had never previously encountered. She went on to earn both her bachelor's and master's degrees in architectural history from UVA in 2021 and 2022, respectively, and is now pursuing a PhD within the Department of Architectural History, which she expects to complete in 2028.

"Architectural history feels like the right fit I never knew existed."

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At the A-School, Alikhan set out to find a research topic that had received little scholarly attention. "I wanted something not done before, to address gaps in the narrative; and I've always loved old ships," she recalls. That curiosity led her to the study of eighteenth-century slave ships. 

Alikhan developed an undergraduate thesis that eventually expanded into a master’s thesis examining the architectural evolution of maritime vessels used in the transatlantic slave trade. Her research eventually attracted interest from other scholars and institutions, including Liverpool's International Slavery Museum, where she has conducted extensive archival research.  

As her scholarly pursuits deepened in the PhD program, Alikhan became interested in the coastal landscapes that enabled and sustained the transatlantic slave trade. Working with her advisor, Professor Louis Nelson, she expanded her research focus. “I chose to study ports, which are particularly vulnerable to environmental factors and urban growth." She was also interested in demonstrating the scale of the slave trade's reach. "The Middle Passage took place on the ocean, but it was rooted in four continents," says Alikhan.

Today, her dissertation, Waterfronts of the Slave Trade: Littoral Landscapes of the Long Eighteenth Century, examines how the transatlantic slave trade shaped waterfronts and port cities across the Atlantic world, focusing on South Carolina, Jamaica, Ghana, and the United Kingdom.

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A detail from Bishop Roberts' 1739 Prospect of Charles Town (left), accessed through Colonial Williamsburg's digital repository, and a contemporary photograph of the same redan by Noah Duell (right). Comparing archival imagery with present-day conditions is a key part of Alikhan's effort to reconstruct waterfront landscapes altered by development and environmental change.

Many of the waterfronts Alikhan studies have been altered by development, erosion, or changing coastlines. Reconstructing them requires assembling fragments from multiple sources—a process she describes as “creating a tapestry.” A self-described lover of maps, she combines archival records, historical maps, satellite imagery, and surviving structures to reconstruct how these landscapes once functioned and how traces of their histories remain visible today.

Among the sources that have most influenced her research is a detailed plat of a Kingston, Jamaica property belonging to one of the city's most prolific eighteenth-century slave traders. The document depicts a fully walled and fortified complex where enslaved people were disembarked directly from ships, a layout designed to minimize opportunities for escape. Textual documentation corroborates the site's function and illuminates the relationship between architecture, commerce, forced migration, and confinement.

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For Alikhan, fieldwork has reinforced the importance of physically experiencing the landscapes she studies. During a recent research trip to Kingston, she visited the site of the former slave-trading complex, carrying historical maps to reconstruct the location of the eighteenth-century waterfront and wharf. Standing where the compound once stood, she was struck by an unexpected detail. 

"The very first thing I saw was the Blue Mountains. So, anyone stepping off a slave ship at that time, into that courtyard, would have seen walls with the mountains looming over them." 

The experience produced what she describes as a visceral reaction, while also reminding her of the limits of historical interpretation. "There is no real way to completely comprehend these experiences," she says. "We can present the evidence and point out factors which may have led to common human emotions or reactions, but it needs to be done with caution, empathy, and a clear reminder that we can't fully understand these experiences, particularly traumatic ones."

At the core of Alikhan's work is a commitment to understanding histories that have often been overlooked or obscured. "History matters so we don't repeat the errors of the past," she says. "The more things are missing from the historical record, the more easily they are forgotten."  

Her scholarship seeks to document not only the systems and infrastructures that supported the transatlantic slave trade but also the lived experiences of enslaved people whose stories were frequently excluded from the historical record.  

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A detail of a Thames basin map (left) and private correspondence (right), photographed by Shaheen Alikhan at The National Archives in Kew, England, during research on eighteenth-century Atlantic waterfronts and trade networks.

This commitment extends beyond her dissertation into a range of collaborative research projects. Alikhan co-edited and contributed to the forthcoming volumes: Reparative Histories: Historic Sites and Local Democracy in the American Landscape (eds. Louis Nelson, Angel Adams Parham, and Katie Wu), and Architectures of the Greater Caribbean (eds. John Dean Davis and Bryan E. Norwood), both slated for publication in the near future. She also recently co-authored an article on Charleston's Nathaniel Russell House with Louis Nelson for the American Historical Review's special issue commemorating the United States' 250th anniversary.

Her forthcoming book, scheduled for publication in early 2028, brings together the full arc of her research on eighteenth-century slaving vessels and the waterfront landscapes that supported the transatlantic slave trade. She hopes readers will better understand how the socioeconomic and cultural forces that sustained that system continue to influence society today.

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Teaching has become an important part of Alikhan’s academic life. She has found opportunities to serve both as a peer and mentor, drawing on experiences that differ from those of many traditional graduate students.  

"So much of teaching isn't about the content but getting students to think critically and work through the material on their own to reach their own conclusions, which can then be applied to other content and experiences." 

She credits her advisor Louis Nelson with helping shape both her teaching and presentation style, particularly his emphasis on meeting students where they are. Through her own teaching, she has worked to create spaces where students feel comfortable discussing difficult histories and confronting the legacies of slavery, feeling safe asking questions, and practicing empathy.  

Looking ahead, Alikhan will teach her first independently developed course in spring 2027. Tentatively titled Hard Histories and Memorialization, the course will examine how societies commemorate major and often traumatic events through the built environment. "The idea of teaching your own course is both exciting and nerve-wracking," she says. "You have a lot of decision-making power, but also a lot of responsibility." The course will explore memory, ethics, and public commemoration while asking who memorials are designed to serve.

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Although she never imagined pursuing a PhD when she first arrived at UVA, Alikhan now sees research, teaching, and public scholarship as powerful ways to create lasting impact. Deeply connected to the University and Charlottesville, she hopes to build an academic career that bridges scholarship, teaching, and community engagement.  

Reflecting on her journey, Alikhan says she is especially proud of returning to school later in life and earning the trust of the communities and individuals she has worked with along the way. "Going back to school as an older adult carries its own difficulties," she says. “I know my mother, who never had the chance to do so, was tremendously proud of me for not giving up on that dream.” Beyond academic accomplishments, she points to the confidence placed in her by faculty, students, and community partners. "I would like to think I have earned their trust as well," she says. "I endeavor to hold that carefully."

Postscript: Alikhan's work has been supported by several competitive fellowships and grants that have enabled archival and field research across the Atlantic world. These include a 2024 Graduate Global Research Award from UVA's Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation, a 2025 Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Summer Research Fellowship, a 2025-26 Research Support Grant from the Paul Mellon Centre at Yale University, and a 2026 Dumas Malone Graduate Research Fellowship. 

She is convening a panel, with fellow PhD candidate Catherine Doucette (Art and Architectural History), titled Port Cities in the Early Modern Atlantic World, for the Association for Art History's 53rd Annual Conference at the University of Exeter, April 7–9, 2027.