Currently Pondering

Research Questions and Direction

My research examines sacred urbanism and diasporic spatial memory, asking how architecture mediates devotion, identity, and collective memory under conditions of urban transformation, displacement, and historical rupture. I approach sacred spaces as contested archives, where ritual practice, colonial histories, institutional frameworks, and diasporic longing intersect and often collide.

At the core of this inquiry is a sustained reworking of genius loci, the spirit of place. Rather than treating it as a stable or bounded concept, I examine how it fractures, mutates, and survives across contexts of erasure, migration, and loss. My work asks what happens to the spirit of place when geography is transformed or destroyed, and how meaning persists through ritual, memory, and collective practice.

Methodologically, I work at the intersection of architectural history, material religion, and comparative place theory. I draw on architectural analysis, visual and material archives, urban ethnography, and speculative research formats to trace how sacred meaning is produced and inhabited over time. I am particularly interested in moments where existing architectural or curatorial frameworks prove insufficient, and where new interpretive structures must be built.

My research is comparative and transregional. Varanasi functions as a critical site for examining sacred urbanism as a living, evolving condition rather than a static religious category. Renaissance Florence offers a comparative lens on patronage, devotion, and the institutionalization of sacred space. Diasporic Sindhi Hindu and Arab contexts extend this inquiry beyond fixed geographies, allowing me to trace how sacred identity is negotiated when homelands are lost, fragmented, or politically inaccessible.

Across these cases, my central questions remain consistent:

• How does sacred meaning endure when place is displaced or transformed?

• What forms of architectural memory persist beyond material survival?

• How can historical frameworks account for ritual, affective, and diasporic relationships to space?

• What responsibilities do institutions hold when engaging sacred spaces shaped by living communities?
  
  

I approach curation as a research method rather than a primary objective. Exhibitions, when they appear in my work, are often speculative or non-material, functioning as tools for testing historical arguments rather than as platforms for artistic display. This research-first orientation extends into heritage policy, where I critically examine how dominant conservation models fail to address the realities of sacred urbanism, diaspora, and community agency.

My work contributes to architectural history and related fields by reframing sacred urbanism as a site of productive tension rather than a preservation problem, and by offering historically grounded frameworks that can inform institutional practice without reducing sacred space to either monument or spectacle.

Research Areas

• Sacred urbanism

• Genius loci and place theory

• Transregional architectural histories

• Diaspora, memory, and displacement

• Research-led curatorial and speculative exhibition frameworks

• Digital mediation of heritage and sacred space

Positionality

My research examines sacred urbanism and diasporic spatial memory, exploring how architecture mediates devotion, identity, and collective memory during urban transformation. Positioned at the intersection of architectural history, diaspora studies, and curatorial practice, my work treats sacred spaces as contested archives where ritual, colonial histories, urban pressures, and diasporic longing converge. The genius loci—the spirit of place—serves as the connective thread, linking geography, memory, and cultural practice.

I decided to become an architectural historian at fourteen, and the conviction has only deepened. My research spans sacred geographies, urban heritagization, comparative place theory, Renaissance patronage, and the spatial afterlives of diaspora. I don’t treat boundaries as walls. I treat them, as the fashionable nomenclature goes now, as prompts. My research intervenes in conversations around architectural history, material religion, and curatorial practice, with a transregional and comparative focus. I am particularly drawn to collaborations that interrogate heritage, memory, and the sacred in contemporary contexts.

I’m drawn to contradictions: sacred and secular, rooted and unmoored, rigorous and intuitive. I am, by nature, a person of paradoxes: both insider and outsider, historian and storyteller, rigorous yet intuitive. I study the sacred and the ordinary, the enduring and the ephemeral, and thus I believe the paradox is a rich place to think from. I believe that a city can be scripture, that memory has architecture, and that research, at its best, is a quiet form of devotion. My method is comparative and experimental, attentive to both continuity and disruption. I focus on the genius loci—the spirit of place—and how it emerges in the material world, mediated through ritual, everyday use, and architectural form. I also explore digital and algorithmic frameworks as contemporary forces shaping our experience of space.

I approach this field from a dual insider–outsider perspective. As a Sindhi-Hindu, I bring nuanced understanding of religious practice while maintaining critical distance as a historian and researcher. My background is a starting point, not a byline: it allows me to expand discourse beyond reductive readings of the Indian subcontinent and foreground multiple temporalities and practices embedded in sacred spaces. Indian-origin is not a simple hyphenation of identity or religion; my research seeks to reveal its complexity in lived urban form.

I have navigated multiple professional lives—as an architect, researcher, project manager, and design consultant. Across all, adaptability has been constant, yet I have held onto a core: architectural history and research. Varanasi, for example, was not widely studied when I began, but I found it cannot be seen only through a religious lens; contemporary interpretations reveal new urban and social dynamics. I have written about architectural history as an architect, designed as a historian, and curated as a researcher. These worlds intersect rarely, and moving fluidly across them enriches my work. Especially today, as AI can learn anything in minutes, the human touch lies in making connections where none are obvious, comparing, contrasting, and expanding frameworks.

The framework proposed by Norberg-Schulz provides a strong foundation, but it is insufficient for global and diasporic contexts. When tested against Indian ritual spaces or sites in Yemen, it begins to break down. This is precisely where my research intervenes: by observing its limitations, I add new layers—examining, for instance, what happens to the genius loci when a place is lost, and how its essence survives. My inquiry explores the genius loci across contexts, from Varanasi’s living sacred city to the Sindhi Hindu diaspora whose homeland was left behind. I am particularly interested in how communities adapt when places are destroyed or displaced, connecting local experiences to broader patterns of destruction in war-torn regions. This approach transforms the traditional idea of genius loci into a multidimensional, cross-cultural concept.