RESEARCH CONSULTATIONS
The Kitāb Khāna brings together my work on the manuscripts, paintings, and material traditions of South Asia and the Persianate world, while also providing a venue for consultation and collaborative inquiry. I offer research consultations for collectors, scholars, museums, libraries, archives, auction houses, and private individuals working with manuscripts, paintings, and material objects from the South Asian, Persianate, and wider Islamicate worlds.
Consultations may include the identification and description of manuscripts and works of art, codicological examination, provenance research, cataloguing, collection assessment, and the interpretation of individual objects and collections. I also assist with exhibitions, publications, and research projects requiring specialist knowledge of manuscript production, painting traditions, textual transmission, ownership histories, and collecting practices.
In addition to object-based consultation, I am available to deliver lectures, gallery talks, collection presentations, and public programmes on the history of manuscripts, the arts of the book, South Asian history, Persianate culture, and related subjects.
Whether concerned with a single manuscript or an entire collection, my aim is to place objects within their proper historical setting and to illuminate the circumstances of their production, use, transmission, and preservation.
SCOPE OF ENGAGEMENT
Consultations may involve close discussion and interpretation of material or research questions, including:
• manuscript and object consultation (cataloguing, identification, interpretation)
• curatorial or exhibition advisory input
• help with Persianate / Islamicate manuscript interpretation
• research consultation for collections, students, and institutions
• paleography / codicology guidance
• provenance and collection history analysis
Engagements may include the examination of images, cataloguing records, or descriptive data relating to objects, alongside discussion of their historical, textual, and visual contexts. Particular attention is given to inscriptions, marginalia, colophons, seals, ownership marks, and other paratextual features, as well as to questions of production, transmission, and reception.
METHODOLOGY
My work draws on training in manuscript studies, art history, and archival research, with experience across major library and museum collections internationally. I approach objects as part of broader intellectual, devotional, and institutional histories shaped by networks of production, circulation, and use.
Methodologically, this work combines codicological analysis, art-historical interpretation, and textual and philological study. It is attentive to material form as well as conceptual content, including script, illumination, binding, paper, and visual program, alongside linguistic and literary dimensions.
PEDAGOGICAL ENGAGEMENT
Consultations may also include pedagogical engagement, including instruction in manuscript studies, Islamicate book cultures, and the history of the book. This may take the form of thematic lectures, reading sessions, or structured academic guidance for courses and programs.
For consultation requests, research collaborations, teaching engagements, or inquiries concerning manuscripts, collections, and material culture, please use the contact page of this website or write to me directly at kaurh@stthom.edu.
