Speakers & Discussants

The Architecture of a Deccan Sultanate: Courtly Practice and Royal Authority in Late Medieval India, 13:00 GMT, November 13th, 2020 (Book Discussion)

Pushkar Sohoni

Pushkar Sohoni is an architect and architectural historian. Trained as a conservation architect, he received his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010. He has written extensively on the architectural and social history of the medieval Deccan, with special interests in archaeology and numismatics. He teaches at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune.

Marika Sardar

Marika Sardar is Curator at the Aga Khan Museum, having previously worked at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Major exhibitions include Interwoven Globe (2013), focusing on the worldwide textile trade from the 16th-18th century; Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1750 (2015), examining the artistic traditions of the Muslim sultanates of central India; and Epic Tales from Ancient India (2016), looking at narrative traditions and the illustration of texts from South Asia.

Vivek Gupta

Dr Vivek Gupta is Postdoctoral Associate in Islamic Art (2020-2023) at the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge where he is also affiliated with Jesus College. He completed his PhD at SOAS, University of London, with a thesis entitled, Wonder Reoriented: Manuscripts and Experience in Islamicate Societies of South Asia (ca. 1450--1600).

‘Art and Architecture of the Badami Chalukyas’, 13:00 GMT, November 27th, 2020

George Michell

George Michell obtained his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, for his dissertation on Early Chalukya temple architecture. Since then his research has ranged from surveys of town planning and Islamic buildings to studies of Hindu temple architecture and sculpture. During the 1980s and 1990s he and Dr. John M. Fritz co-directed an extensive survey of Hampi-Vijayanagara.

India in the Persianate Age: 1000—1765, 16:00 GMT, December 11th, 2020 (Book Discussion)

Richard Eaton

Richard Eaton is a professor in the University of Arizona with a primary interest in the social and cultural history of pre-modern India (1000-1800). Most recently, he has published the second volume of the new Penguin history of India, entitled India in the Persianate Age, 1000-1765, which explores the long-term interaction between the Persianate and Sanskritic worlds, between the Iranian Plateau and South Asia, and between Islam and Indian religious traditions.

Alka Patel

Alka Patel is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and in the PhD Program for Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her research has focused on South Asia and its connections with Iran and Central Asia, including overland and Indian Ocean maritime networks including mercantile networks and architectural patronage in 18th-19th-century South Asia.

Roy Fischel

Roy S. Fischel is a lecturer in the History of South Asia at SOAS University of London. He completed his PhD at the University of Chicago in 2012. His work focuses on state, society, ideology, and identity––and the intersection between them––in early modern South Asia and the Muslim world. His first monograph, Local States in an Imperial World: Identity, Society and Politics in the Early Modern Deccan, was recently published by Edinburgh University Press and the Royal Asiatic Society. His current work examines kingship, sovereignty, and historiography in Bijapur between the Persianate, Islamic, and Indic worlds.

‘The Square and the Rectangle: Design Transformations and Architectural Renovation between the 14th-16th Centuries in Vijayanagara’, 13:00 GMT, December 18th, 2020

Annapurna Garimella

Dr. Annapurna Garimella is a designer and an art historian. Her research focuses on late medieval Indic architecture and the history and practices of vernacular visual and built cultures in India after Independence. Garimella is the Managing Trustee of Art, Resources and Teaching Trust, a not-for-profit organization, which is a research library dedicated to art, architecture, design and craft histories, conducts independent research projects and does teaching and advisement for college and university students and the general public. She also heads Jackfruit Research and Design, an organization with a specialized portfolio of design, research and curation.

The Courts of the Deccan Sultanates: Living Well in the Persian Cosmopolis, 13:00 GMT, January 8th, 2021 (Book Discussion)

Emma Flatt

Emma Flatt is an Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a Visiting Associate Professor at NUS with a joint appointment in the South Asia Studies Programme and the History Department. She has a PhD in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies (2009). Her work focuses on the social and cultural history of early modern India.

Evrim Binbas

Evrim Binbaş received his PhD degree from the University of Chicago. After seven years at Royal Holloway, University of London, he moved to the Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany. He studies early modern Islamic history with a particular focus on the Timurid and Turkmen dynasties in the fifteenth century.

Subah Dayal

Subah Dayal is an Assistant Professor at Gallatin, New York University. She is a historian of the Indian Ocean, with a focus on early modern South Asia and the Persianate world. Her research interests are in connected histories, household studies, comparative early modernities, global history, and pre-modern documentary and manuscript cultures.

‘Image and Imagination: Wall Paintings in Early Modern Southern India’, 16:00 GMT, January 22nd, 2021

Anna Lise Seastrand

Anna L Seastrand is an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota and her research has focussed on early modern south-eastern India, with a broad interest in the embodied experience of sacred space. She is also a Visiting Scholar at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago, where she is part of a multidisciplinary team focused on the “interwoven” sonic and visual histories of the Indian Ocean world. She is also part of a research team collaborating on publication of a set of interconnected temples in south-eastern India.

‘The Idea of Sacral Kingship between Islamic and Turco-Mongol Concepts of Politics’, 13:00 GMT, March 5th, 2021

Evrim Binbas

Evrim Binbaş received his PhD degree from the University of Chicago. After seven years at Royal Holloway, University of London, he moved to the Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany. He studies early modern Islamic history with a particular focus on the Timurid and Turkmen dynasties in the fifteenth century.

Registrations for the webinar series are now closed.

If you have any queries, please write to deccanheritagefoundationindia@gmail.com.