Research and Expertise
My research examines the intellectual, artistic, and material cultures of South Asia and the broader Persianate world, with particular attention to manuscript traditions, courtly aesthetics, and the movement of narratives across linguistic, religious, and political boundaries. I study manuscripts and paintings as historically situated objects through which knowledge, authority, and cultural memory are produced, negotiated, and preserved in the premodern and early modern periods.
Working across art history, codicology, and intellectual history, I emphasize the material and visual dimensions of texts alongside their literary and conceptual frameworks.
Primary Areas of Research
Manuscript and painting cultures of South Asia and the Persianate world
Codicology, paleography, illumination, bindings, scribal practice, and systems of production from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries.
Transregional and transcultural exchange
Circulation of narratives, artistic styles, devotional practices, and scientific knowledge across South Asia, Iran, Central Asia, the Ottoman world, and Europe.
Courtly patronage and knowledge systems
Imperial libraries, workshop cultures, scholarly networks, and the relationship between knowledge production and political authority.
Religion, ethics, and visual culture
Devotional iconography, visual rhetoric, and cosmological and philosophical frameworks shaping manuscript illustration.
Methodology
My work combines codicological analysis, art-historical interpretation, and textual and philological study. This includes close examination of bindings, paper, colophons, watermarks, and paratexts, alongside iconographic and stylistic analysis of painting traditions and workshop practices. I also engage with Persian, Urdu, Hindi, and Sanskrit sources, with attention to translation, adaptation, and textual transmission.
Interdisciplinary Approach
My research bridges art history, history, religious studies, literary studies, book history, and archival studies. Across both research and teaching, I aim to make manuscript cultures accessible to specialist and broader audiences while preserving the historical and material specificity of the objects themselves.
