Dr Aditi Kumar
Associate Professor, Business of the Creative Industries
Dr Aditi Kumar explores how visual culture, heritage and the creative industries shape the way societies remember and tell their stories. Working across art history, visual studies and heritage studies, she combines academic research with curatorial practice, collaborating with museums, cultural organisations, artists and communities in the UK and internationally.
Biography
Before joining the University of York Mumbai, Dr Kumar was Visiting Research Fellow at the Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Centre for International Development (WICID) and the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, where she continues to hold an Honorary Fellowship. She previously held a Leverhulme-funded Postdoctoral Research Associate position on the Migrant Memory and the Postcolonial Imagination project at Loughborough University.
She completed her PhD and MPhil in Visual Arts at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where her doctoral research examined the visual histories, photographs and material culture of displaced communities from Jammu and Kashmir. She holds master's and bachelor's degrees in Art History and Aesthetics from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. She received a Gold Medal for her Bachelor of Visual Arts. She has previously taught at the University of Roehampton, Thapar University and NIIT University.
Research
Dr Kumar's research investigates how film, photography, museums, exhibitions, archives and public art influence identity, belonging and cultural representation. Her work focuses on how creative practice documents social change, amplifies underrepresented histories and builds dialogue across communities in Britain, South Asia and the wider Global Majority.
- Creative industries, cultural heritage and public history.
- Film, photography and visual storytelling.
- Museums, exhibitions and curatorial practice.
- Material culture, memory and archives.
- South Asian and British-Asian visual cultures.
- Decolonisation, cultural representation and identity.
- Community engagement and participatory heritage.
She is completing two book projects on postcolonial visual culture and the decolonisation of cultural representation. Her research has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the Warwick Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL), WICID and the University Grants Commission, India. She welcomes supervision enquiries from undergraduate and postgraduate students in these areas.
Teaching
Dr Kumar teaches the first-year undergraduate module Creative Materials in the Business of the Creative Industries programme. The module introduces students to the materials, media and cultural forms that shape the creative industries, drawing on film, theatre, visual culture, museums and heritage, with a focus on India's cultural landscape and wider Global Majority perspectives.
Her teaching combines lectures, seminars, object-based learning, exhibition visits and collaborative projects. She has taught in the UK and India and delivered guest lectures at universities including the University of Cambridge, SOAS University of London, the University of Warwick and Loughborough University.
Professional Activities
- Advisory Board Member, Mayor of London's Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm
- Curator of exhibitions on migration, memory and cultural heritage with UK and international partners
- Lead on interdisciplinary research and knowledge-exchange projects funded by WICID and IATL
- Invited speaker at universities, museums and cultural organisations in the UK and internationally
- Member of the Association for Art History (UK), the British Association for South Asian Studies, the College Art Association (USA), the Borders, Race, Ethnicity and Migration Network, and the International Society for Buddhist Studies
Selected achievements: Co-Creation Research Grant (Principal Investigator), University of Warwick (2023); Community Engagement Award, International Summer Academy of Fine Arts, Romania (2023); Curatorial Lab Award, Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation (2014–15); UGC Junior and Senior Research Fellowships (2014–2019).