President's Office

Team and Reviewers

CEPT Essay Prize committee:

Seema Khanwalkar (Convener, Semiotician)

Dr. Seema Khanwalkar is a Professor, Adjunct Faculty at CEPT University, Ahmedabad. She has a PhD in Linguistics from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi A visiting Faculty at IIM Ahmedabad, and NID Ahmedabad, her teaching spans 27 years across the social sciences and the humanities. She was nominated as the Vice President of the Asian Semiotics Association in Seoul, South Korea. She teaches courses in Semiotics, Semantics and Design, Cultural Anthropology, Design Ethnography, Meaning and Design, to students of architecture, design, and management. She straddles her academic and her industry inputs with equal passion. She has several international publications to her credit and is a regular presenter at international semiotic forums. She is the author of the recently published book ‘Applied Semiotics in the Indian Cultural Context ‘.

Mansi Shah  (Urban Designer, Landscape Researcher, Educator)

Mansi Shah is an architect-urban-designer. She is based in Ahmedabad and teaches in Bachelor of Urban Design, as an Adjunct Professor at CEPT University. With teaching, she works on her independent research projects on different subjects under ‘Productive Urbanism Collective’ (a research collaborative focused on urban landscapes as productive and performative spaces), ‘Ahmedabad Mapping Project’, and City Water Walk. She has co-authored the book ‘Rebel Bodies Rebel Cities’, published by CEPT University Press in 2022. It is a teaching and research project that examines the complexities of urban public spaces and the importance of acknowledging competing stakeholder interests to create more inclusive and equitable environments. She has also co-authored the book ‘Prathaa: Kath-khuni Architecture of Himachal Pradesh’ as a senior researcher at the Design Innovation and Craft Resource Centre (DICRC), CRDF, CEPT University.

Office-bearers: 

Aarti Bhoorat

Shortlisting - Review Committee:

Catrinel Dunca (Litterateur, Academic)

Catrinel Dunca is a queer trans* feminist researcher interested in engaging with both theoretical and action-oriented research, and also with writing processes and practices across curriculum, through writing workshops and setting in place systems of support for writing in professional and academic spaces, particularly in the context of disciplines of the built environment.

Kanika Singh (Historian, Director Writing Center, Ashoka University)

Kanika is Director of Centre for Writing & Communication at Ashoka University, Delhi. She is a historian, and her current work focuses on the representation of heritage in Sikh museums. Her research interests include public history in contemporary India, Delhi’s history and pedagogy. She is the founder of Delhi Heritage Walks, and has taught at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, Ambedkar University Delhi, and Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel Management, NOIDA. 

Rutul Joshi (Urban Transport Planner, Academic, Writer)

Rutul is an architect-urban planner, academic, and writer. His research interests and publications focus on transit-oriented development, sustainable mobility, and transport equity issues in Indian cities. He has been working on the ways of contextualizing transit-oriented development for Indian cities. His recent publications, a practitioners handbook, and an edited volume covers the same. Rutul also writes in the newspapers and media on civic and urban development issues in Gujarati and English. 

Sonal Mithal (Architect, Artist, Academic)

Sonal Mithal is an architect, artist, and educator. She is a co-founder of the research and conservation studio, People for Heritage Concern. Her work transects architecture, landscape, queer studies, history, and heritage—focusing on processes and agencies of ecological survival, contingencies of identity and representation, and emergent intersectionality in shaping of the built environment.