Faculty

Gauri Bharat

Sr.Associate Professor
Institutional Roles: Program Chair- Master of Architecture in Architectural History and Theory and Head- Gender Parity Mission

Gauri Bharat is associate professor and Program Chair of Architectural History and Theory at the Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India. She completed her Ph.D. on conceptions of space and place among Santals, an indigenous community in eastern India in 2015, which was the culmination of a fifteen year long interest in indigenous habitations and published as 'In Forest, Field, and Factory: Adivasi Habitations Through Twentieth Century India' (SAGE - Yoda Press 2019). She continues to work on the architectural and material culture of indigenous communities, currently initiating research on nomadic pastoralists. Her current research has developed in two key areas. The first focus area is lived histories, where she explores how built environments in the past were shaped by and in turn shaped the individual and collective lives of people. There are currently three publications in the works, exploring neighbourhoods and streets of Ahmedabad as socio-spatial formations.The second major focus area is histories of making. This consolidated with a grant from the Graham Foundation in 2019 for a project on the history of reinforced concrete use in the Indian subcontinent. The project has now expanded into a larger exploration mapping various aspects of technological, material, and aesthetic dimensions of modern architectural production in the late 19 and early to mid- 20 centuries. What undergrids these two rather diverse research areas is a commonality of method. In both cases, she combines architectural and spatial transformations with archival analysis and ethnographic narratives to investigate how habitations transform. Gauri developed an innovative curriculum for the postgraduate program in architectural history and theory, where the students learn to explore rigorous and creative methods for architectural historical enquiry while also learning to engage with both academic and non-academic audiences. The program is the only one of its kind in South Asia. Gauri is keenly interested in expanding architectural history and theory discourses, and hopes to engage with non-academic audiences, school education, while encouraging her students also to engage with and expand public scholarship.

Education

Degree Institution Field Year of Completion
PhD University of East Anglia Architectural History 2015
MA Architecture National University of Singapore Architecture 2007
Bachelor of Architecture CEPT Architecture 2004

Areas of Expertise

Adivasi and indigenous architectural history ~Construction history~Ethnographic approaches to architectural history

Courses Taught

Sr No. Course Name Semester
1 Foundation Studio M-2022
2 Foundation Studio M-2022
3 HRW3 - Paradigms M-2022
4 AHT - Key Texts in History & Theory S-2022
5 AR3611 : Histories of Making-Making of histories S-2022
6 HRW8: Histories of Making - Making of Histories S-2022
7 Theorising Architectural Production S-2022

Research/Design Projects in Areas of Expertise

Ongoing research projects:

  • Architectural production in early twentieth century India
  • Architecture of nomadic pastoralist communities
  • Mapping Ahmedabad - place, politics, stories

Completed research projects:

  • Mural traditions in Jharkhand
  • 'Place-making Through Practice: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Santal Architectural History (PhD thesis, completed in 2015)
  • 'Urban Resource Centres in Ahmedabad, India: An institutional prototype for facilitating service delivery to the urban poor' - Research on the ngo SAATH's URC initiative, completed in 2008)
  • Reconceptualising slums using informan made films (M.A.Arch thesis, completed in 2007)

Research Articles and Book Chapters in Areas of Expertise

  • Advertising RCC: Material Mainstreaming in Pre-Independence India, in “The Radical City,” Edited by Pithamber Polsani, SAGE-Yoda Press (forthcoming)

  • In Forest, Field, and Factory - Adivasi Habitations Through Twentieth Century India, SAGE-Yoda Press, 2019

  • Religious Anchors in Contemporary Neighbourhoods, in “Locating Neighbourhoods in the Global South,” edited by Sadan Jha (Ed.), Bloomsbury, 2020

  • Entry on ‘Mud Plastering’ in Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (2nd Edition), Edited by Marcel Vellinga, Bloomsbury, 2018.
  • Entry on ‘Rangoli - Floor Drawings’ (with Peter Engel) in Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (2nd Edition), Edited by Marcel Vellinga, Bloomsbury, 2018. (Forthcoming)
  • 'Roadside Shrines and Another Theory of Indian Urbanity' in Archiprix Dossier, edited by Jigna Desai and Inigo Bonal, CEPT University + Archiprix International, 2017.
  • Their Voice or Mine? Debating People’s Agency in the Construction of Adivasi Architectural Histories, chapter ‘Whose Tradition?’, edited by Nezar ALSayyad, Mark Gillem and David Moffat, Routledge, 2017. (In press)
  • Subalternity, Religious Politics and the Appropriation of Urban Public Places: The Case of Roadside Shrines in Ahmedabad, India, in IASTE Working Paper Series, University of California, Berkeley, 2017. (In press)
  • Visual Methodologies for People-Centred Design, in ‘Design For a New Age: Teaching the Social Art of Architecture’ (The Work of Berkeley Prize Teaching Fellows 2013-2015), edited by Benjamin Clavam, on www.berkeleyprize.org (http://berkeleyprize.org/downloads/files/global/MANUSCRIPT.pdf)
  • An Enquiry into Santal Wall Painting Practices in Singhbhum, India, in Journal of Adivasi and Indigenous Studies (online), 2015.
  • Transformation of Santal Dwellings, in Baha Magazine (published in Jamshedpur, India), November 2014.
  • An Architectural history of Santals in East Singhbhum, in Lively Stories (www.livelystories.com), June 2014.

Presented Papers and Invited Lectures in Areas of Expertise

  • Half a Decade of Academic Leadership: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, Co-authored with Jigna Desai, presented at ‘Symposium on Gender and Academic Leadership in India’, Avani Institute of Design, Calicut, March 2020

  • Material Mainstreaming: Advertising RCC in Pre-Independence India, Presented at ‘The Radical City’, Srishti Institute for Art, Design, and Technology in December 2019

  • The Sacred in the Everyday: Jain Religious Institutions as Anchors in Contemporary Neighbourhoods, Presented at ‘Locating Neighbourhoods in the Global South’, Tezpur University in September 2019.

  • Carpenters, Fabricators, Masons, and Other Guardians of the Design Galaxy Presented at ‘Design, Culture, and History,’ K.R. Cama Oriental Institute, Mumbai in January 2019.

  • Making the Invisible Visible: Researching People - Keynote address at DGCOA, Kozhikode, Kerala in September 2018

  • Training Reluctant Writers - Paper presented at Relfections on Writing, Ashoka University - Sonepat, Haryana in April 2018

  • Heritage and Education - Invited discussant for panel discussion in Ahmedabad University in February 2018

  • TEDx talk: Making sense of Indian cities - Presented at TEDxDAIICT, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Communication Technology,Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India on 9 April 2017

  • Mapping Movement - Organised a roundtable on urban pastoralism, as part of Living Lightly - Journeys with Pastoralists, in IGNCA - New Delhi, in December 2016

  • Subalternity, religious politics and the appropriation of urban public places: The case of roadside shrines in Ahmedabad, India - Presented at the Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE) “Legitimating Tradition” to be held in Kuwait City, Kuwait, from December 17-20, 2016
  • The Production and Consumption of Adivasi Heritage: Industrialisation and The Nobel Savage - Presented at “The Past Before Us: History and Heritage in South Asia” organised jointly by the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, United Kingdom and Presidency College, Kolkata, India, in London on 5-6 September 2016.
  • Documenting perceptions – through children’s drawings - Presented at “Documenting Diversity: Collections, Catalogs, Context” annual conference of the International Committee for Documentation, held at New Delhi from 7-9 September 2015.
  • Their voice or mine? Debating people’s agency in the construction of indigenous architectural histories - Presented at “Whose Tradition” the biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments, held at Kuala Lumpur from 14-17 Dec 2014
  • “Doing fieldwork as a female researcher” - Presented at “Ideas in Movement: Addressing Tensions in Anthropology” Royal Anthropological Institute Postgraduate Conference in Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom on 28-29 October 2013
  • “Roles of floor plastering and wall painting in Santal architecture” - Presented at “from floor to ceiling” – Symposium on South Asian Murals as part of the South Asian Literature Festival, held at the University of Westminster, London, UK on 25-26 October 2013
  • “Using participatory visual methods for exploring Adivasi (indigenous) perceptions of built environments” - Presented at Friday seminar series of School of International Development, UEA, Norwich UK on 18 October 2013
  • “Of drawings, photos and the research encounter: Reflecting on participatory visual ethnographic practices in an Adivasi village” - Presented at “New frontiers in geography” - Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference in London, UK, from 26-28 August 2013
  • “What it is like to be a Santal woman” - Presented at Postgraduate Conference, College of Arts, University of Glasgow on 19-20 May 2013
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Professional Honors, Prizes, Fellowships, Grant-in Aids

  • Graham Foundation Grant - Research grant for individuals awarded for ‘Modernisation Before the Modernists: The Rise of Concrete in early Twentieth Century India’ in the 2019 cycle; http://www.grahamfoundation.org/grantees/5905-modernization-before-the-modernists-the-rise-of-concrete-in-early-twentieth-century-india

  • Global Connections Fellowship Grant - Awarded by the GAHTC (Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative, supported by the Mellon Foundation) for workshop on Globalising Asian Histories for architectural history educators in Asia. To be held in December 2018.

  • UNESCO-Sahapedia Project Fellowship - Awarded for developing visual archive on mural traditions in Jharkhand, from October to December 2017

  • ICAS Best Dissertation Award - Winner of ICAS Book Prize 2017 for best Social Sciences dissertation at the 10th International Convention for Asian Scholars, held in Chiang Mai, Thailand on 20 July 2017.

  • Erasmus+ ICM Grant 2016     As Co-Investigator from CEPT Ahmedabad for the British Council sponsored Erasmus Plus International Credit Mobility Teaching Exchange, with the University of Sheffield, awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, United Kingdom for two years from 2016-18

  • FA research grant 2016 - Awarded by the Faculty of Architecture Research Development Fund, CEPT University for conducting research on alternative urban histories through a study of roadside shrines
  • Berkeley Prize Teaching Fellowship 2014 - One of three annual Berkeley Prize Teaching Fellowship awarded worldwide for developing an innovative syllabus on people centred design for undergraduate architecture education Berkeley Prize Teaching Fellowship proposal    
  • Jeffrey Cook Award 2014 - For best paper by a PhD student at the biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments, held at Kuala Lumpur in Dec 2014
  • Doctoral scholarship (2011-14) - Faculty of Arts and Humanities research studentship, and, School of Art, Media and American studies research studentship for overseas students, both awarded competitively by the University of East Anglia to one international student across 2011 cohort of the Faculty of Arts and Humaniti
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