PhD project: Reading Urdu on the internet: Lahori Nastaʿlīq as a case study for enabling digital parity across global scripts
Funding: SWWDTP2-funded
Supervisors: Prof Gerry Leonidas (University of Reading) and Dr. Yayha Lavaf Pour (UWE Bristol)
Abeera’s research is a practice-based PhD that is split into two parts; 1) archival research into how printed Lahori Nastaʿlīq has come to represent notions of Pakistani and Muslim identity, and 2) a web-based typographic framework for a culturally sensitive representation of Lahori Nastaʿlīq. It is an investigation into how Urdu users’ expectations for Lahori Nastaliq are shaped through Urdu’s print history and culture, and how that typographic identity can be maintained through web-based interventions. Insights and learnings developed from studying how Lahori Nastaʿlīq can be typographically represented online will be extrapolated to meet similar needs of other global and under-represented scripts.