Public talks
“The Origins of Indian Performing Arts.” Talk given at the Nartan Festival in Leicester on 7th October 2025.
Introductory remarks (with Dr Marina Pavlidou-Elamin) of “Erotic Poetry in the Ancient World”, a workshop held at UCL on 4th July 2025.
“Sex and the Sanskrit Classics: Untranslatability, Code-Switching, and Sexed-up Translations.” Keynote talk given at the 40th Anniversary & Launch Party of FRAME, Journal of Literary Studies at University College Utrecht, 25th June 2024.
“Four Sanskrit Poems on Love.” Talk given at UCL as part of the series “Verses from the Antique: Poems of Love and War from the Ancient World” organised by the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), 25th January 2024.
“The Modernity of Shakuntala: from Goethe’s ‘young year’s blossoms’ to Tollywood movie Shaakuntalam.” Talk given at the Indian Drama Workshop on Kalidasa’s Shakuntala hosted by the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University, 29th-30th June 2023.
“Sappho in Sanskrit, the Gita in Greek: Crosspollinating the Classics.” Talk given within the Research Seminar series organised by the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University, 10th November 2022.
“Comparatism and the Commentary.” Paper given as part of the online panel “Decolonisation” with Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Francesca Orsini, and Phiroze Vasunia, held within the series “Receptions & Comparatisms” (organised by the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama), 8th November 2021.
“The erotic untranslatable: Sanskrit love poetry for modern readers.” Talk given within the seminar “Translating the Erotic” (as part of the series Translation, Transmission, & Cultural Transfer) held at Queen Mary University of London, 23rd October 2019.
“Translation immoral? Contamination, hybridity, and vociferous silences in early twentieth-century translations of Sanskrit erotic poetry.” Talk given at the 5th session of the 2017-18 edition of the Sanskrit Reading Room held at SOAS, London, 29th November 2017.
Conference papers
“Translation and Transformation: Eavesdropping and Bodyswapping in Early Modern ‘Whore Dialogues.’” Paper presented with Will McMorran (QMUL) at the international conference “Sex in Translation” hosted by Queen Mary University of London, 4th-5th July 2024.
“Sanskrit Theater and World Literature.” Paper presented at the roundtable “Classical Reception in a Global Context” chaired by Alexander Beecroft, held at the 2024 Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention, Philadelphia, 5th January 2024.
“Classical Drama and the Rediscovery of Sanskrit: Theatre Translation Theories and Practices in the Long 19th Century.” Paper presented with Giovanna Di Martino (UCL) at the international conference “Nothing Happened: Translation Studies before James Holmes” hosted by the Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS) at UCL, London, 10th November 2023.
“‘Let the Learned Read the Original’: Sanskrit Erotic Poetry Between Translation and Forgery.” Paper presented as part of the seminar “Eastern Texts, Western Audiences” at the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) annual meeting held virtually on 8th-11th April 2021.
“‘Love’ in Sanskrit poetry: between universality and untranslatability”. Paper presented as part of the panel “Understanding the Vocabulary of Emotions” chaired by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad at the 51st annual conference of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (SACP) held at Bath Spa University, 18th-21st June 2019.
“Sanskrit poetry by Western poets in Mark Van Doren’s An Anthology of World Poetry (1928).” Paper presented at the conference Canon? Practice? Commodity? The past, present and future of the literary anthology held at Queen Mary University of London, 14th-15th June 2019.
“Oriental poetry by Western poets: ‘translations’ from the Sanskrit in Mark Van Doren’s An Anthology of World Poetry (1928).” Paper presented at the workshop “The West-Eastern Lyric Modernist Poetry between Asia and Europe” held at SOAS, London, 17th November 2017.
“Translation immoral? Sanskrit erotic poetry ‘for subscribers only.’” Paper presented at the roundtable “Translation Impossible: The Ethics, Politics and Pragmatics of Radical Literary Translation” chaired by Carola Erika Lorea at the 2017 International Convention of Asia Scholars, Chiang Mai, 20th-23rd July 2017.
“Translating Sanskrit erotic poetry ‘for the delight of the general lover of the Muse’: Edwin Arnold’s Indian Love Lament (Caurapanchashika).” Paper presented at the roundtable “Present Absence: World Literature and Book Circulation in the Nineteenth Century” chaired by Francesca Orsini at the 2017 Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention, Philadelphia, 5th-8th January 2017.
“Against the Sanskrit canon? Classicism, anti-classicism, and the erotic in colonial North India.” Paper presented at the 7th Coffee Break Conference, Leiden, 8th-10th September 2016.
“The many lives of a Sanskrit love poem.” Paper presented at the conference Reading the World: Challenging the Dynamics of Canon Formations hosted by the Institute of English Studies (Senate House), London, 3rd December 2015.
“When words say what words can’t (or mustn’t) say: non-verbal communication in Sanskrit kavya and aesthetic theories.” Paper presented at the Seventh International Indological Graduate Research Symposium (IIGRS 7) held at the University of Leiden, 15th-17th October 2015.
“Latinizing (and Grecizing) Sanskrit erotic poetry: nineteenth-century philology and the continuum Shringara-Eros-Amor.” Paper presented at the conference “Erotic Literature: Adaptation and Translation in Europe and Asia” organized by the CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities), Cambridge, 29th-30th June 2015.
“Shringara, Amor, Eros: nineteenth-century Latin translations of Sanskrit erotic poetry.” Paper presented at the Sixth International Indological Graduate Research Symposium (IIGRS 6) held at the University of Hamburg, 6th-8th October 2014.