Aditi Gupta

My forthcoming PhD thesis will shine a light on the life and work of Jean-Baptiste Gentil (1726-1799), a French East India Company officer who spent twenty-five years in different parts of India, where he constituted his collection of manuscripts, art albums, maps, and material culture from the subcontinent, now preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris. I am looking at Gentil's travel writing, self-representation and self-fashioning, and the role of indigenous scholars, interpreters, and artists in the making of the Gentil Collection.

This project is supervised by Professor Catriona Seth and is funded by the AHRC DTP, Exeter College and the Clarendon Fund.

Prior to beginning my doctoral study, I obtained a BA in French and an MA in French Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. My research interests include travel writing on India, history of collections, history of the book and material culture, and Arts of the Indian subcontinent in the French collections.