Challenging the canon: Women in architecture in India – Madhavi Desai

About: Madhavi Desai, Madhavi Desai is an architect, researcher, writer and a teacher. She was an adjunct faculty at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India (1986-2018). She has had Research Fellowships from ICSSR, Delhi, the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, MIT, USA, Sarai, Delhi and the Getty Foundation, USA. She is a founder member of Women Architects Forum. She is the co-author of Architecture and Independence: The Search for Identity, India 1880 to 1980, Architectural Heritage of Gujarat: Interpretation, Appreciation, Values, Gujarat Government. She is the editor of Gender and the Built Environment in India, and the author of Traditional Architecture: House Form of the Islamic Community of the Bohras in Gujarat. Her recent book is Women Architects and Modernism in India: Narratives and Contemporary Practices. She is at present working on an edited book tentatively titled, Gender and the Indian City: Re-visioning Design and Planning to be published by South Asia Press, New Delhi. She specializes in teaching courses and workshops on gender and the built environment in the Indian context. She is a member of the nominating committee of the Berkeley-Rupp Professorship and Prize at the University of California at Berkeley, USA since 2012. She was also a visiting scholar in the department of gender and women’s studies at the University of California at Berkeley, USA in 2014.