Prof. Gulfishan Khan is a specialist in medieval Indian history. Till June 2024, she was professor and chairperson of the Department of History at Aligarh Muslim University (India). Her most recent publication is a paper Representations of the Palace and Cityscape (co-authored with W. M. Thackston) in the annual Muqarnas (Brill: 2024). Her major academic contributions are the two books Indian Muslim Perceptions (Oxford University Press, 1998) and Indo-Persian Elite (New Delhi: Manohar, 2025).
As a Fulbright-Nehru scholar, Prof. Gulfishan Khan would be studying some important aspects of architectural refashioning of the dynamic capital (darul khilafa) Agra, a vibrant medieval urban settlement during the first half of the Seventeenth Century. In this significant period the Mughal court at Agra was the nucleus of a splendid flowering of art and artistic culture, based on blending of Indian and Perso-Islamic traditions under the liberal court-patronage of emperor Shah Jahan. The architectural contribution of imperial women in the aestheticization of the urban landscape of the historic capital and its environs would be highlighted.