About me

I am a second year MPhil student in Islamic Art and Architecture at the Khalili Research Centre and St Cross College at the University of Oxford as an Ertegun Graduate Scholar in the Humanities. My previous research has centred around the early modern Arts of the Book in South Asia and the larger Turco-Persian world. While at Oxford, I have also trained in Modern and Ottoman Turkish, with a summer working on Ottoman palaeography and primary sources at the Harvard-Koç Ottoman Studies Foundation in Cunda, Turkey. My current research looks at Sufi orders and built spaces between Transoxiana and Anatolia.I am also a literary translator working from Urdu and Hindi into English, having translated a selection of Wajida Tabassum's short stories, as well as an ongoing novel-length translation from Hindi.I previously studied as an undergraduate student at Ashoka University (2018-22) with the Departments of History, Visual Arts and Creative Writing.

Epigraphy from the Süleymāniye Mosque complex of Mimar Sinan.
Photograph: Akshaj Awasthi, July 2024

Research

Publications:‘Radiant As The Moon: Mah Laqa Bai“Chanda" and Visual Culture in Asaf Jahi Hyderabad’. Qurbatein: A Gender and Sexuality Bi-Annual, no. 02: Kings and Queens (2023). Link.Tabassum, Wajida. ‘Three Coffins’. Translated by Akshaj Awasthi. Ashoka Centre for Translation, Translation Lab, April 2022. Link.‘Mihr Chand – The Awadhi Master’. The Heritage Lab, July 2021. Link.Book reviews:Review of Won't You Stay, Radhika? by Usha Priyamvada, translated by Daisy Rockwell, Scroll, September 2023. Link.Review of My Son's Heritage: A Secret History of Lynching and Blood Justice in India by Aparna Vaidik, Scroll, March 2020. Link.Review of Shahjahanabad: The Living City of Old Delhi by Rana Safvi, Scroll, January 2020. Link.Review of Tawaifnama by Saba Dewan, Scroll, September 2019. Link.Conferences, Research Presentations, Lectures:Presented a paper titled Viewing the Jokhang: The Memorialisation and Conquest of a Sacred Space. International Conference on the Built Environment (ICBE-2023), organized by the Jindal School of Art and Architecture (JSAA), OP Jindal Global University, National Capital Region (NCR), India. April 2023.Travelling Faith? From Wood to Pixels. Lecture delivered at Ashoka University as a component of the elective Visual and Material Cultures of the Himalayas. Course instructor: Latika Gupta. November 2022.Capstone Thesis Presentation, ‘Deccan, Forgotten? Hyderabadi Visual Culture in the ‘Long’ Eighteenth Century’ Department of Visual Arts, Ashoka University. April 2022.History Undergraduate Thesis Presentation, Power as Patronage: Imperial Art and Architecture Under the Mughals and the Ottomans at the Fifth Annual History Undergraduate Research Thesis Presentation, organised by the Department of History, Ashoka University. February 2021.

Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo, Granada. Photograph: Akshaj Awasthi, April 2024.

Literary translation

In addition to my academic interests in art history, I am also a trained literary translator. At Ashoka University, I completed a thesis and a minor in Creative Writing (Literary Translation) mentored by Arunava Sinha, comprising translations from Urdu by writers such as Wajida Tabassum, Intizar Husain, and Parveen Shakir.My ongoing translation into English of award winning author Nasera Sharma's Hindi novel, Alpha-Beta-Gamma, was part of the innaugural shortlist of the Armory-Square Prize in South Asian Literature in 2023. The prize intends to award "a talented translator of South Asian literature into English with the publication of their outstanding manuscript".An excerpt from my translation of this novel was published by Words Without Borders in July 2023.I am proficient to various levels in Spanish, Persian, Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, English, French, Uzbek and some Chaghatay.