Huma Gupta

Huma Gupta is Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture and the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT. Gupta holds a PhD in the History and Theory of Architecture and a Master's in City Planning from MIT. Currently, she is writing her first book The Architecture of Dispossession, which is based on her doctoral thesis on state-building and the architectural transformation of migrant reed-mat and mudbrick settlements in mid-century Iraq. Previously, Gupta 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 in the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World, and Thresholds. As a practitioner, she has worked on infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, municipal planning in Syria, eviction prevention and homelessness in the greater Boston area, and humanitarian response to housing needs for persons displaced due to climate, conflict, and development projects around the world. Gupta's courses include Decolonial Ecologies (graduate seminar), Climate Futures, Cities Past (graduate seminar), Dwelling & Building: Cities in the Global South (graduate lecture), Earth, Reed & Water (graduate seminar), Historiography of Islamic Architecture + Art (graduate seminar), Building Islam (undergraduate lecture), and Architecture & the Wealth of Nations (graduate seminar).