Aditi Gupta is a final-year DPhil Candidate in French Studies. She works on early modern Indo-French encounters. Her forthcoming thesis will shine a light on the collection and writings of Jean-Baptiste Gentil (1726-1799), a French 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.
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. 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.
Recently, Aditi was a researcher-in-residence at the Bibliothèque et Villa Marmottan in Paris (2025-26), thanks to a grant from the Académie des Beaux-Arts. She worked 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. She talks about it here: https://marmottan.hypotheses.org/83000
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, collections, translation, and travel writing.
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.
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/2026/06/15/aditi-gupta-speaks-plenary-session-academie-des-beaux-arts
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