I am Chandni Jeswani, an architectural historian working on sacred geographies, urban heritagization, and diasporic spatial memory. My research examines how meaning persists across transformed, erased, or contested landscapes, particularly in sacred and urban contexts shaped by displacement, ritual practice, and historical rupture.

Trained in History of Art with Curating (Distinction) at Birkbeck, University of London, I work across architectural history, material religion, and comparative place theory. My practice is research-led and historically grounded, with public-facing and curatorial work emerging as a secondary form through which research is tested, articulated, or made speculative.

The framework I began my inquiry with - Christian Norberg-Schulz’s idea of genius loci - the spirit of place - now bends, fractures, and expands through my work, especially when tested against Indian ritual space, diasporic memory, and sites scarred by erasure. I examine how built spaces, religious imagination, and cultural memory interact—through material, visual, and digital archives, urban analysis, and comparative frameworks. I am particularly interested in sites where institutional narratives struggle to account for lived, ritual, or affective uses of space. My approach is interdisciplinary, crossing art history, urban studies, material religion, and digital ethnography, always asking: how is meaning produced, transmitted, and experienced in the places we inhabit?

I approach curation as a research method rather than a primary objective. In my work, exhibitions may be speculative, non-material, or conceptual, functioning as sites of inquiry rather than platforms for artistic display. This research-first orientation reflects my preference for historically driven conversations over artist-centric curatorial models, and for building interpretive frameworks rather than celebrating individual practices.

My research spans sacred geographies, urban heritagization, comparative place theory, Renaissance patronage, and the spatial afterlives of diaspora. I work transregionally and comparatively, treating boundaries not as fixed limits but as productive sites of historical and methodological tension. My work has been presented at conferences in the UK, Europe, the United States, and the Middle East, and published in journals and edited volumes engaging architecture, memory, and cultural identity.

Alongside academic research, I collaborate with museums, cultural institutions, and research platforms on projects that require conceptual clarity, historical depth, and sensitivity to place. I am drawn to projects where standard categories prove insufficient, and new interpretive structures need to be built. Across contexts, my aim is consistent: to develop rigorous frameworks for thinking about place, memory, and the sacred in contemporary life.

For collaborations, research projects, or inquiries, please get in touch here