Aditi Gupta is a final-year PhD candidate in French Studies. Her forthcoming 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. This project is funded by the AHRC OOC-DTP and the Clarendon Fund.
Aditi has been invited to speak on multiple occasions at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in Paris, where she also contributed to the official launch of a unique digital resource, ‘Shared Heritage: France-South Asia’, with two articles: one on Gentil’s journey in India and another one on 19th-century French artist Gustave Moreau‘s use of Indian motifs in his artworks. More recently, she delivered a public lecture on Gentil's art collection for the series "Trésors de Richelieu" jointly organised by the BnF, INHA (Institut national de l'histoire d'art), and l'École nationale des chartes.
From January 2026, Aditi will be a researcher-in-residence at the Villa et Bibliothèque Marmottan in Paris, where she has received a grant from the Académie des Beaux-Arts to work on the posthumous publication of Gentil's Mémoires sur l’Indoustan (1822), which contributed to the dissemination of the Frenchman's observations on India among European readers.
Before beginning doctoral study at Oxford, Aditi taught English at Cité scolaire François Villon in Paris and obtained an MA in French Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Her research interests include early modern diplomacy, cross-cultural encounters, travel writing, the history of collections, and cultural translation.
Publication
Review of De l’attirance à l’expérience de l’Inde: un Vaudois à la marge du colonialisme anglais, Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier (1741–1795), by Béatrice Veyrassat. French Studies: A Quarterly Review, vol. 79 no. 2, 2025, p. 296-297. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/956221.
Paper Presentations (selected)
• “Translation as Cultural Mediation? Reflections on an Eighteenth-century French Treatise on Indian History” at Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT) Discussion Group (16 June 2025, St. Anne's College)
• “The Art of Commensurability: Indo-French Collaboration in the V&A Album (1774)” at French Graduate Research Seminar, Newnham College, University of Cambridge (15 May 2025)
• (Invited) BnF, Paris – "Jean-Baptiste Gentil: A Significant Page in Indo-French History" joint presentation with Prof Dhir Sarangi (15 Oct 2024): https://www.bnf.fr/fr/agenda/france-asie-du-sud-une-circulation-des-savoirs
• “French Patronage of Indian Artists: The Gentil Album (1774) and the Art of Self-Fashioning" at the Graduate Symposium of the Early Modern French Seminar at the Maison Française d’Oxford (28 Nov 2024)
• “Countering Stereotypes: The Visual Politics of the Gentil Album (1774)” at the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) Annual Conference (9 Jan 2025, Pembroke College, Oxford)
• “Scholarly Adventures: Deciphering Ancient Indian Texts in Eighteenth-century Paris” at the Society for French Studies (SFS) Annual Conference (2 July 2024, University of Stirling)
• “Networks and Roots of Early French Indology: Indian Manuscripts in Eighteenth-Century Paris” at the Oxford French Graduate Seminar (17 Oct 2023, All Souls College)
• “The Gentil Collection: Mediating India in Eighteenth-Century France” at the International Society for Eighteenth-century Studies (ISECS) 2023 Congress in Rome (4 Jul 2023, Sapienza Università di Roma)
Teaching
• Tutor in Modern Languages - Exeter College, University of Oxford (Feb’24)
First-year undergraduate seminars and tutorials on the 18th-century French epistolary novel - Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782)
• Visiting Lecturer in French - University of Westminster (Jan—May'24)
First and second-year undergraduate modules: The French World and the Word (A1-B1), Expressions of French Culture (B2), Oral Expression (A2-B1)
• Graduate Teaching Assistant - Jawaharlal Nehru University (Sep’20—Jan’21)
Second-year undergraduate module: History of Culture, Civilisation, State & Society in France: Renaissance and Early Modern France
Mentoring and Outreach
• Mentor - AHRC Mentorship Scheme (Oct-Nov'24)
- helped prospective applicants prepare materials (research proposals, CVs, writing samples) for their PhD funding applications to the AHRC
• Graduate Mentor - Exeter Plus Programme (Sep'24 and Sep'25)
- ran individualised and group sessions for incoming Humanities undergraduates at Exeter College to help their transition from school to university by teaching study skills (research, essay writing) and providing academic challenges
• Study Mentor - Exeter College, Oxford (Nov'24)
- reviewed progress, identified issues and offered advice on new challenges faced by first-year undergraduates in French
Service Roles
• Co-convened Oxford’s French Graduate Seminar at All Souls College (Oct’24—Jun’25)
• Co-organised the Oxford Medieval & Modern Languages Annual Conference (June 2023)
• helped launch DEI initiatives at HECAA (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture) (May'21-Jun'22)
News items featuring Aditi Gupta
https://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/news/2025/11/05/aditi-gupta-awarded-residency-grant-academie-des-beaux-arts-paris
https://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/news/2025/11/04/dphil-student-aditi-gupta-wins-ralph-gibson-bursary
https://www.exeter.ox.ac.uk/shared-heritage-france-south-asia-exonian-helps-launch-digital-resource-at-the-national-library-of-france/
https://www.oocdtp.ac.uk/article/aditi-gupta-contributes-two-articles-shared-heritage-france-south-asia-unique-digital