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About
Dr. Diva Gujral is an LSE Fellow in Twentieth-century Indian and Global Imperial History. She completed her doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Picturing Non-Alignment: Photography, nation-building and identity in India, c. 1950-1975,’ at the Department of History of Art, UCL, in 2021. Her thesis traced the development of modernist photography in early postcolonial India in the context of the state’s political (and cultural) enactments of anti-colonialism. Prior to joining the LSE she held teaching positions at UCL and the Open University. Her research interests include global art histories; photographic modernism; anticolonial solidarity networks; and themes of postcolonial utopias, nostalgia, and colonial legacies in South Asian visual culture.
Expertise
Postcolonial India; History of Art; History of Photography; Global Modernism; the Cultural Cold War
Teaching
Dr Diva Gujral teaches the following courses:
At undergraduate level
HY120: Historical Approaches to the Modern World
HY329: Independent India: Myths of Freedom and Development
And at postgraduate level
Engagement and impact
- Gujral, Diva. ‘The freedom of distance: Pakistani artist Fiza Khatri on femininity and public space in South Asia,’ Scroll, July 2021.
- Gujral, Diva. ‘OP Sharma: Light Work,’ Aperture, June 2021.
- Gujral, Diva.‘Photography in India: from archives to contemporary practice'– Aileen Blaney and Chinar Shah, and VIEW: Contemporary and Lens-Based Art from India– Nicolas Östlind and Niyatee Shinde’. Source, January 2021.
- ‘Supriya Lele S/S 21 Womenswear’, ShowStudio, September 2020.
- ‘Magic of Coincidence: Subcontinental Flows in Photography – in conversation with Diva Gujral’, PIX, July 2020.
- Gujral, Diva. ‘The Art of Resistance: Gulammohammed Sheikh’s ‘Speechless City’ is about refusing to look away,’ Scroll, January 2020.
- Gujral, Diva. ‘South Asian Modernists and the London Gallerist Who Championed Them,’ review of South Asian Modernists, 1953-1963at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. Frieze, April 2018