Saarthak Singh

Saarthak Singh is a historian of South Asian art. His research focuses on the landscape and architectural history of medieval towns in central India, on epigraphic practices and on the constructions of difference in premodern times. 

Born in New Delhi (1993), he trained in art history at the University of St Andrews (2015) followed by training in Sanskrit, Persian and old Hindi at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, 2016). His undergraduate thesis on multiheaded statuary of medieval Kashmir won the Association of Art Historians prize in 2015. He received his PhD in History of Art and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, under the supervision of Finbarr Barry Flood in 2023. His doctoral thesis, on the architectural history of temples and mosques in central India from the 11th to 15th centuries, won the University of California, Berkeley's Art History Dissertation Prize in 2024. At the same time, he co-directed with Michael Willis a digitization project funded by the British Library (EAP1416) on the archives of the Sufi dargah of Kamâl al-Dîn Chishtî in Dhâr, Madhya Pradesh (2021-23). Before joining the EFEO, he began a postdoctoral project on the architectural study of coexistence, conflict and calamity supported by the Flanders Science Foundation (FWO) at Ghent University, Belgium (2023-28).

He has published on a variety of subjects, including medieval workshops of Hindu sculptures (with Johan Levillain), Islamic talismanic objects, performance arenas in north India and kalamkari textiles in coastal south India. 

In 2024-25, he will teach a course on the architecture of medieval India, c. 400-1400 and on the history of pre-colonial India (with Valérie Gillet).