Vivek Gupta is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at UCL where he researches connected book histories across South, Central, and West Asia (ca. 1100—present). From 2020 to 2023, he served as Postdoctoral Associate at University of Cambridge, where he continues to co-direct a research and exhibition project at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Hindustani Airs: Music, Pleasure, and Cultural Exchange in Courtly Lucknow with Senior Curator, Dr Suzanne Reynolds.Vivek’s first book, Worldshaping Wonders: Manuscripts and Experience in Hindustan, will be based on his 2020 PhD thesis. His second project, Manuscript as Monument: Inscribing Orality in Muslim South Asia (ca. 1300—1550), is the primary subject of his work at UCL. This study focuses on a calligraphic practice indigenous to India known as Bihari and its relationship to performance in devotional spaces.

As a member of the research project, Calligraphies at the Frontiers of the Islamicate World: CallFront, Vivek contributes a study of Hindavi language texts in Arabic scripts. He has published his initial findings about this corpus in a book chapter, “Inscribing Orality: Calligraphy, Layout, and the Vernacular Anxieties of the Chandayan Manuscripts,” (Marg Publications, 2024).