Desai awarded Mellon fellowship to support South Asian architectural and history research

Madhuri Desai, associate professor of art history and Asian studies, has been awarded a Mid-Career Fellowship for the fall of 2023 by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London, England.

Desai came to Penn State in the fall of 2007 and focuses her research on South Asian architectural and urban history during the time period of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.

Founded in 1970 by the art collector and philanthropist Paul Mellon, the Centre, which is part of Yale University and a partner to the Yale Center for British Art, is an educational charity that champions new ways of understanding British art history and culture.

During her fellowship, Desai will work on “Shared Antiquarianisms: Maratha Temple Architecture and the East India Company.” This research is part of a larger project on the architectural and urban history of the Maratha Nagpur Kingdom during the eighteenth century.

“I feel very fortunate to have received the Mid-Career Fellowship from the Paul Mellon Centre as it will allow me to focus on research and writing,” Desai said. “This project is important to my scholarly trajectory and I am glad to have the time and institutional support.”