Sara Mondini, Principal Investigator
Sara Mondini is an art historian with an interdisciplinary background, specializing in the artistic productions—both ancient and contemporary—of South Asia, West Asia, and North Africa. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of Art and Architecture of West and South Asia in the Department of Languages and Cultures at Ghent University, Belgium.
She is the Principal Investigator of the five-year research project The Mosques of Kerala: Artistic Vocabularies in the Identity-Building of Muslim Communities (2023–2028), funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) through a prestigious Odysseus Type II grant. This groundbreaking project investigates the role of religious architecture in shaping and expressing the identity of Muslim communities in the Indian region of Kerala.
Before joining Ghent University, Sara held various adjunct teaching positions at both Italian and international institutions. From 2009 to 2023, she taught at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; between 2016 and 2023, she was affiliated with the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) of New York at Politecnico di Milano; she also lectured at the University of Urbino “Carlo Bo” (2022–2023) and collaborated with the University of Granada in Spain (2010–2013). In these roles, she taught courses on South Asian visual culture and Islamic art and architecture, areas in which she has developed long-standing expertise.
Sara completed her academic training at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where she studied Oriental Languages and Civilisations, majoring in arts and archaeology, and earned a PhD in Oriental Studies (Art and Architecture) in 2009.
Throughout her career, she has carried out extensive research on Indo-Islamic, Indian, and Islamic art and architecture more broadly. Her main research interests include the patronage of Islamic architecture in South Asia, the transmission and adaptation of artistic models, and the socio-political dynamics connected to architectural patronage. She also focuses on the transformation and reception of buildings over time, paying special attention to how shared and/or contested sacred spaces are interpreted, reshaped, and experienced by communities across centuries.
Postdoctoral researchers
Muhammed Niyas Ashraf
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Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil
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PhD-researchers
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