Ph.D. Candidate
About
Suyog Prajapati studies the relationships between art objects and social spaces in South Asia and the Himalayas. Religious, cultic, and votive figures set against architecture help frame his inquiries into material culture and placemaking. His ongoing dissertation project examines the role of Buddhist monasteries (bahās and bahīs) in fostering the urban growth alongside Newār Buddhism in the Kathmandu Valley. Further, he is interested in the reception of Indo-Islamicate visual idioms across the Nepali Himalayas in the medieval and early modern periods. Suyog earned an MA in Buddhist Studies from Tribhuvan University, with a thesis on the form and function of chthonic deities (yakṣas), and an MA in Art History from Rutgers University, with a final essay on the narrative frieze and architectural agency of the monastery of Naka Bahī. This latter essay was awarded the Percy Buchanan Graduate Prize in 2022. Suyog has held research internships and fellowships at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, the Huntington Archive of Buddhist and Asian Art, and the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art.
Interests:
- Himalayan art and architecture
- Transregional mobility and circulation
- Urbanism
- Newār Buddhism
- Indo-Islamicate intersections
