I am a historian of South Asian and Persianate art and history specializing in the Mughal Empire and its connections with Iran, Central Asia, and the wider Persian-speaking world. My research examines manuscripts, paintings, and material objects as sources for understanding governance, religious life, intellectual culture, and the transmission of knowledge in the early modern period. I am particularly interested in the ways books, libraries, and works of art shaped political authority and served as instruments through which rulers, scholars, and religious communities articulated and preserved knowledge.
The manuscript lies at the center of my scholarship. I work with Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, and Ethiopic manuscripts dating from Late Antiquity through the nineteenth century. Through the study of colophons, marginalia, seals, ownership notes, and inscriptions by scribes and painters, I reconstruct histories of patronage, collecting, workshop practice, textual transmission, and the movement of books across regions and communities.
In the course of my research, I have worked extensively with Qur’anic manuscripts and the history of the muṣḥaf as a material and devotional object. This work has included the study of Qur’ans preserved in institutional collections, with particular attention to their production, transmission, patterns of use, and their place within wider intellectual and religious traditions.
Alongside manuscripts, I study a wide range of material culture associated with the Mughal, Safavid, and broader Persianate worlds, including astrolabes, maps, scrolls, arms and armour, and other objects of intellectual, scientific, and artistic significance. Particular attention is given to inscriptions, provenance records, and traces of ownership, which provide evidence for understanding the individuals and institutions that produced, exchanged, and preserved these materials. Much of my work is devoted to locating and documenting understudied objects in library, archival, and museum collections, contributing to revised cataloguing and the scholarly visibility of previously overlooked materials.
My research draws upon training in codicology, manuscript production, and the history of the book across South Asian, Persianate, and Islamicate traditions. I have conducted research in major libraries, archives, and museums in the United States and abroad, including the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Harvard Art Museums, Houghton Library, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the Yale Center for British Art, the National Gallery of Australia, the University of Sydney Library Special Collections, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the State Library of New South Wales.
My work has contributed to the documentation and interpretation of collections that remain little known to scholarship. In 2025, I assisted the State Library of New South Wales in researching and interpreting a Qur’an and a copy of the Diamond Sutra selected for display during the library’s bicentenary exhibition. This work formed part of the institution’s presentation of two of its most significant religious texts and reflects my commitment to advancing both scholarly and public understanding of manuscript heritage.
My research has been presented at national and international conferences, including the International Congress on Medieval Studies and the International Medieval Congress. I have also received advanced professional training through the Rare Book School, the California Rare Book School, and the Australia and New Zealand Rare Book School. Since 2023, I have held a teaching appointment at the University of St. Thomas, where I teach courses in South Asian history, with additional instruction in American history. The South Asian history courses represent the first of their kind within the university’s history curriculum.
EDUCATION
2020–2022 University of St. Thomas, History Department
Master of Liberal Arts in History
Thesis: “Patronage of Knowledge Production: The Mughal Imperial Library and the Politics of Legitimizing Rule”
2009–2019 University of St. Thomas, History Department
Bachelor of Arts in History
Academic Distinction
Honors Thesis: “Gulbadan Begum: A Study of Her Memoir and Its Contribution to Mughal Court Historiography in Relation to Abu’l-Fazl and Bada’uni”
2009 University of Houston, Honors College, Department of History (transferred)
2005–2007 Lee College
Associate of Arts in Humanities
Inducted into the Hall of Fame
LANGUAGE TRAINING
2024–Present
MTO International Persian School
Certificate of Completion in Persian Language Studies
2025
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Persian Program
Persian I – Certificate of Completion
LANGUAGES
• English: Native proficiency
• Hindi: Advanced (spoken and written)
• Punjabi: Advanced (spoken and written)
• Urdu: Proficient (reading and writing)
• Persian: Proficient (reading and writing)
• Sanskrit: Beginner (reading comprehension)
