Sara Mondini is an art historian specialised in the artistic productions - both ancient and modern - of South Asia, Middle East and North Africa, and Assistant Professor of Art and Architecture of West and South Asia in the Department of Languages and Cultures at Ghent University. She is currently the Principal Investigator leading the five-year project The Mosques of Kerala: Artistic Vocabularies in the Identity-Building of Muslim Communities (2023-2028), funded by the FWO with an Odysseus Type II grant. Before joining the Ghent University, Sara had collaborated as Adjunct Professor with various universities, the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, (2009-2023), the FIT-Fashion Institute of Technology of New York at Milan Politecnico, Milano, (2016-2023), the University of Urbino “Carlo Bo” in Italy (2022-2023), and with the University of Granada in Spain (2010-2013), where she taught courses of South Asian Visual Culture and Islamic Art and Architecture.
Sara studied Oriental Languages and Civilisation (arts and archaeology major) at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice where she obtained her PhD in Oriental Studies (Art and Architecture) in 2009. She has conducted extensive researches on Indo-Islamic, Indian and Islamic art and architecture; she is especially interested in the patronage of Islamic architecture in South Asia, in the circulation of models and in socio-political dynamics connected to patronage. She is focusing on buildings’ transformation and perception across the centuries and on the way in which shared and/or contested sacred spaces are understood.
