Aayushi Gupta is a part-time PhD candidate in History at Girton College, University of Cambridge. Her research examines the visual practices of British women’s missionary organisations in colonial India between 1850 and 1950. She is particularly interested in how missionary women used images and objects – such as personal photograph albums, lantern slides, posters, and printed materials – to construct narratives about their work, and how these circulated across mission fields, homes, and fundraising circuits. Her project explores questions around public versus private representation, the interplay between visuality and theology, and the role of Indian Christian women in adapting and reproducing these visual strategies. Bringing together histories of gender, empire, religion, and visual culture, her research also reflects a broader interest in the politics of the colonial archive.

Alongside her doctoral work, Aayushi is a Research Assistant on the Digital Lab project at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, where she supports digital access, research, and community engagement with collections – especially with a view to making them more visible, accessible, and inclusive. She has also served on the committees of the Museum Ethnographers Group, the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, and the Scottish Society for the History of Photography.

As the PGR Representative of the Social History Society, she is committed to fostering supportive, collaborative spaces for early career researchers and is especially excited to build connections across the wide-ranging subfields of social history.