Currently Pondering

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 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.

Geographic and Thematic Focus

• Varanasi, India: Kashi is a palimpsest where myth, colonial legacies, and urban life converge. Research focuses on ritual inscriptions, the Ganga as a medium of temporal multiplicity, and diasporic connections shaping the genius loci.
  
  

• Florence, Italy: Renaissance Florence provides a comparative lens to study patronage, aesthetics, and Catholic spirituality, revealing culturally specific relationships between devotion, power, and preservation.
  
  

• Arab Diaspora Spaces: Post-imperial Arab artistic practices illustrate how sacred identity is articulated when communities are removed from origin geographies, offering lessons for decolonial placemaking.
  
  

Methodology: The Three-Sphere Framework
I have developed the Three-Sphere Framework, reading sacred urbanism across three intersecting dimensions: faith (lived spirituality), scholarship (historical and curatorial knowledge), and daily life (urban pressures and social practice). This framework identifies coherence and conflict across these spheres, producing nuanced readings of sacred space and offering tools for ethical institutional engagement.

Curatorial Practice and Heritage Policy
While my research remains central, curatorial practice provides a complementary lens for testing, communicating, and operationalizing insights. I understand curation as intellectual responsibility made spatial: exhibitions and programs become platforms for translating research into encounters between objects, ideas, and audiences. Applied through the Three-Sphere Framework, curatorial work considers intellectual, experiential, and community dimensions to ensure work is visually compelling, intellectually rigorous, and accessible to audiences beyond the expert.

This perspective extends to heritage preservation policy. Current frameworks, dominated by Western conservation paradigms and top-down models, often fail to serve the communities most affected by heritage loss, including diasporic populations and rapidly urbanizing cities. Sacred spaces face simultaneous pressures from development, secularization, migration, and institutional misalignment with local values. Insights from my research inform decolonial heritage preservation, translating scholarship into actionable frameworks that center equity, community agency, and operationalized decolonial practice. The stakes are concrete: whether sacred sites remain spaces of spiritual practice or become museum objects, whether diaspora communities have voice in their representation, and whether decolonial frameworks move beyond theory to shape tangible cultural futures.

Intellectual Contribution and Gap
My work addresses a clear gap at the intersection of sacred urbanism, decolonial curatorial practice, and diaspora studies. It contributes to broader scholarly discourse by:

• Providing a robust methodological tool for representing sacred urbanism across cultures and diasporas.
  
  

• Reframing sacred urbanism as a site of productive tension rather than a preservation problem, centering diaspora and ethical curatorial practice.
  
  

• Demonstrating how scholarship can directly inform institutional and public engagement with sacred space.
  
  

Publication Strategy and Career Vision
I plan to publish 7–8 peer-reviewed journal articles and 4 book chapters annually, with a monograph or edited collection by 2027–2028. Over five years, my goal is to establish an independent research program, contributing 20–30 publications and cultivating a public intellectual profile. This trajectory will support institutional innovation, inform heritage policy, and advance global understanding of non-Western sacred spaces.

By bridging insider insight with critical analysis and cross-disciplinary experience, my research expands methodological and theoretical frameworks for understanding sacred urbanism. Curatorial and policy work operate as complementary instruments that amplify, apply, and communicate research findings. A PhD is the next step in consolidating this work into an impactful, internationally recognized body of scholarship that contributes meaningfully to architectural, heritage, and diaspora studies.