Occupation
Assistant Professor
Contact
ABOUT
Huma Gupta is an Assistant Professor in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT. Gupta holds a PhD in the History and Theory of Architecture and a Master's in City Planning from MIT. Currently, she is writing her first book - The Architecture of Dispossession, which is based on her doctoral thesis on state-building and the architectural transformation of migrant reed-mat and mudbrick settlements in mid-century Iraq. Previously, Gupta was the Neubauer Junior Research Fellow at Brandeis University, Humanities Research Fellow at New York University-Abu Dhabi, and International Dissertation Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Council. Her work has been published in the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World, and Thresholds. As a practitioner, she has worked on infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, municipal planning in Syria, eviction prevention and homelessness in the greater Boston area, and humanitarian response to housing needs for persons displaced due to climate, conflict, and development projects around the world.
Discipline
Architecture & Urban Planning
Sub Areas
Urban Studies
Colonialism
Development
History Of Architecture
Transnationalism
Trade/Investment
Environment
State Formation
Modernization
Political Economy
19th-21st Centuries
Geographic Areas of Interest
Iraq
All Middle East
Afghanistan
Syria
India
Specialties
Political Economy And The Built Environment
Environmental History Of The Middle East
Architectural And Urban History Of Iraq
Languages
Hindi (native)
Punjabi (native)
Arabic (advanced)
English (native)
Dari (intermediate)
Education
PhD
| 2020
| Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MA
| 2011
| Department of Urban Studies and Planning
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology
BA
| 2003
| Middle East History, Asian Studies
| University of Cincinnati
Abstracts
The ‘Always, Already Hybrid’ one: The Diaries of Alexander Svoboda from Baghdad to Paris and Back.
Picturing Sha`biyyah on the Margins of Baghdad: Kamil Chadirji and al-Ahali in the 1930s
Broadcasting Development & Revolution in Iraq, 1955-1963
Seizing the Means of Calculation: Khair el-Din Haseeb and the Economic Value of Rural Architecture
The Making of Urban ‘Wetlands’ in Baghdad from Maʻdan to Mayzara
Material Systems and the Production of Scarcity in Iraq
