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Dr Chris Moffat

Chris

Senior Lecturer in South Asian History

Email: c.moffat@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: ArtsTwo 2.30

Profile

I am a historian of architecture, politics and urban life. Trained as a political and intellectual historian of modern South Asia, my research has focused primarily on twentieth and twenty-first century India and Pakistan. Threaded through all my work is an interest in the philosophy and anthropology of history and especially the ‘public life’ of history in the modern world. Questions of commemoration, conjuring, silencing and haunting are central to both my research and teaching.

I joined Queen Mary in 2015, having completed my PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2014. I received my BA from the University of Waterloo and an MSc from the London School of Economics.

Research

Research Interests:

My research is grounded in questions of historical methodology, especially where the discipline of history grapples with alternative conceptions of time, the interruptive influence of the dead, and the fraying or tangled threads of memory. I have an abiding interest in alternative or dissident commemorative practices, particularly as they relate to public space, artistic practice and the politics of archival or architectural preservation.

I have written extensively on the Indian revolutionary martyr Bhagat Singh (1907-1931), tracing his continuing political potential into the twenty-first century and asking what it means to take such revenant figures seriously in the history of political thought. This research culminated in my first monograph, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance: Politics and the Promise of Bhagat Singh, published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press.

In recent years, I have been reflecting on the relationship between building and thinking, designing and making. These themes shape my second monograph, Lahore After Modernism: Architecture and its Histories in Pakistan, published in 2026 by Stanford University Press. The relationship between architecture and the history of ideas is also central to my third monograph project, a concept history of ‘Islamic architecture’ after decolonization, under contract from Princeton University Press and tentatively titled Building the Muslim World.

In addition to these monographs, I have been involved in a number of collaborative projects, including on the writing of revolutionary histories in India and on the relationship between infrastructure and belonging in Pakistan. I oversee the online teaching tool ArchitecturalArchives.pk, the outcome of longstanding interactions with architectural professionals, educators and students in Pakistan. At QMUL, I am the founder and co-Director of the South Asia Forum. Outside QMUL, I am Secretary and Trustee of the George Padmore Institute.

Publications

Monographs

Edited Volumes

Academic Journal Articles

Book Chapters

  • ‘Monument as Threshold: Unfinished Buildings and the Aesthetics of Construction in Lahore’ in Iftikhar Dadi and Hoor Al Qasimi (eds.), Lahore Biennale 02 Reader (Milan: Skira, 2024).
  • ‘Introduction: Walking the Orange Line’, co-authored with Ammara Maqsood and Fizzah Sajjad in Maqsood, Moffat and Sajjad (eds.), Lahore in Motion: Infrastructure, History and Belonging in Urban Pakistan (London: UCL Press, 2025).
  • ‘Dera Gujran’ in Maqsood, Moffat and Sajjad (eds.), Lahore in Motion (London: UCL Press, 2025).
  • ‘Pakistan Under Construction’ in Angelika Fitz, Elke Krasny and Marvi Mazhar (eds.), Yasmeen Lari: Architecture for the Future (Cambridge MA, MIT Press: 2023).
  • ‘Philosophy of the Bomb’ in J Daniel Elam (ed.), Aesthetics and Politics in the Global South (London: Bloomsbury, 2022).
  • ‘Dust and Debris in Two Meetings and a Funeral’ in Naeem Mohaiemen, What We Found After You Left (Toronto: Power Plant, 2021).

Select Essays, Reviews, and Other Publications

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