Alka PatelAlka Patel is Professor in the Department of Art History and in the PhD Program for Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Patel's research has focused on South Asia and its connections with Iran and Central Asia, including overland nd Indian Ocean maritime networks. Her works include Building Communities in Gujarat: Architecture and Society during the Twelfth-Fourteenth Centuries (Brill 2004), and special issues of Ars Orientalis XXXIV (2004) and Archives of Asian Art LIX (2007). Patel’s interests have expanded to include mercantile networks and architectural patronage in 18th-19th-century South Asia, as evidenced in Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition (co-ed. K. Leonard, Brill 2012). Her recent volume India and Iran in the Longue Durée (Jordan Center for Persian Studies, 2017), co-edited with ancient Iranist Touraj Daryaee, analyzes Indo-Iranian connections over two millennia. Read More Read Less