Anisha Shekhar Mukherji’s forte lies in reading historical sites and investigating knowledge-systems encapsulated in indigenous traditions. As a conservation professional, author, independent designer, and Founding Director at Ambi Knowledge Resources Pvt. Ltd — a publishing house that promotes the heritage of the subcontinent — Anisha is positioned at the confluence of architecture, design, literature, and history. She integrates these interests into her teaching-modules as visiting faculty at SPA Delhi, where since eighteen years, she has been guiding students in critical enquiry and design thinking.
Biresh Shah has practiced and taught architecture, urban design and planning, as well as urban conservation in Kathmandu, Nepal for over twenty five years. He has written and published in newspapers, design magazines, academic publications as well contributed to books on many aspects of the built environment of the Kathmandu Valley. He founded ARCHIPLAN in 2001, a design practice based in Kathmandu. He is the founding member and current President of Kathmandu Institute, a non-profit organization founded in 2022 to conduct research, documentation, discussions/seminars, exhibitions into the Transformation of the unique built landscapes of Nepal.
Ela Singhal is the Executive Director at the Architecture Foundation, India. She has been involved with the exhibitions, State of Housing – Aspirations, Imaginations and Realities in India and Architecture of Practice, and the publications by the Foundation on architecture. She is keen on bringing into discussion how research can inform practice and co-edited a methodology report Imagining a Sanitation Hub, that reinterprets the idea of community toilets by defining prototypes for different geographical and urban context. Singhal manages the archival research at the Foundation, currently developing the RMA Archives.
Kaiwan Mehta is a theorist and critic in the fields of visual culture, architecture, and city studies. Mehta has studied Architecture (B.Arch), Literature (MA), Indian Aesthetics (PGDip) and Cultural Studies (PhD). Since 2012 he has been the Managing Editor of Domus India. Mehta co-curated with Rahul Mehrotra and Ranjit Hoskote – “The State of Architecture: Practices and Processes in India” at the National Gallery Modern Art, Mumbai and 'State of Housing - Aspirations, Imaginaries, and Realities in India'. Currently he is the Dean at Balwant Sheth School of Architecture, at SVKM's NMIMS University.
Professor Sanjeev Vidyarthi is head of the department of Urban Planning and Policy (UPP) and the founding director of the Master in City Design (MCD) program at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He is also the co-editor of JPH, the journal of record in the field of planning history. Exploring the case of contemporary India, he studies who does the urban planning and city design work in such a massive, complex country and how. He has published five books and many essays in leading academic journals. Sanjeev works with progressive scholars and professional practitioners worldwide.
With over 38 years of experience in the field of architecture and design, he also has over 30 years of experience as an academician. Along with A R Ramanathan and Anurag Gupta, he won the first prize in the National Architectural Design Competition to design The New Wing of the NGMA (National Gallery of Modern Art), Jaipur House, New Delhi; which led to the formation of the firm T E A M (Team for Engineering Architecture and Management, New Delhi) as a founding partner. He has also designed several major exhibitions, authored multiple books and is actively engaged in academia.
Vishal Khandelwal is a faculty member in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. His research and teaching encompass modern and contemporary architecture, design, and urbanism with a focus on South Asia and on cross-cultural, interdisciplinary histories. Vishal is currently writing a book on art and design pedagogy and practice at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad through the work of key individuals who taught visual communication, textile design, architecture, and product design at this experimental design school and at other academies in Ahmedabad and beyond between 1955 and 1985.
Vyjayanthi V. Rao is an anthropologist, writer and curator, teaching at the Yale School of Architecture. Focusing on memory, heritage and the built environment, her work explores the intersections of violence, uncertainty and speculation through scholarly writing and fieldwork in India and the United States. She has published extensively on these subjects, co-curated two major exhibitions for the Lisbon Architecture Triennale (2022) and the Center for Architecture in New York (2023) and participated as an artist in the Kochi Biennale (2016) and the Chicago Biennale of Architecture (2023). Since 2023, she has been one of the Editors in Chief of the journal Public Culture (Duke University Press).
