Huma Gupta is the Aga Khan Assistant Professor in Islamic Architecture at MIT. As a historian of the built environment, urban policy expert, and filmmaker, she specializes in the history and theory of informality, forced migration, and biogenic architecture in the global south. Dr. Gupta's first book project The Architecture of Dispossession theorizes the relationship between state-building and dispossession through architectural transformations of migrant reed and earth dwellings in 20th century Iraq. Dr. Gupta holds a PhD in the History and Theory of Architecture and a Master's in City Planning from MIT. Previously, she was the Neubauer Junior Research Fellow at Brandeis University, Humanities Research Fellow at New York University-Abu Dhabi, and International Dissertation Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Council. Her work has been published by the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World, Yale University Press, Intellect Books, and Thresholds. Â
