Introduction
I was born and raised in New Delhi and completed my undergraduate studies in History at the University of Delhi. I later studied for both my postgraduate and Doctoral degrees in the Department of History of Art at University College London. Following my doctorate, I was a Fellow in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. As of October 2024 I am a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Ruskin School of Art and an Extraordinary Junior Research Fellow in the History of Art at Queen’s.
Research
I research Indian lens-based media in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in conversation with the country’s political landscape. As such, I work between History, History of Art and South Asian studies more broadly. My PhD thesis, entitled “Picturing Non-Alignment: Photography, nation-building and identity in India, c. 1950-1975,” explored modernism in Indian photography and film in the context of independent India’s Cold War-era diplomatic networks and exchanges. At Oxford I am beginning a new project on Indian contemporary art and its engagement with ideas and archives relating to the early postcolonial state.
Publications
Some of my recent publications include:
“Body Politic: Contemporary art and its socio-political entanglements in India, 1970-1991” in The Imaginary Institution of India, ed. Shanay Jhaveri (London: Barbican, 2024).
“Painting on Strike: Labour and urban transformation in Sudhir Patwardhan’s Bombay,” in Routledge Companion to Global Art Histories, eds. Diana Newall, Grant Pooke and Leon Wainwright (London: Routledge, 2025). Forthcoming.
“Photographie coloniale à Bombay: sujets et espaces de Narayan Dajee et de Hurrychund Chintamon” in Mondes photographiques, histoires des débuts, eds. Annabelle Lacour and Christine Barthe (Paris: Musée du Quai-Branly, 2023).
Photography in India: A Visual History from the 1850s to the Present. London: Prestel, 2019. Co-authored with Nathaniel Gaskell.
“Painters With A Camera (1968/69): In search of an Indian photography exhibition”. Object 20, 2019.