Dr Tania Sengupta

Research summary

Situated broadly within postcolonial and transcultural studies, my research explores architectural histories and urbanisms of ‘non-western’ worlds, their encounters and entanglements with the West, as well as with each other. In specific, I focus on interconnected histories and theories of colonial, post-colonial and contemporary architecture and urbanism of South Asia. My expertise and interests cover a range of subjects: architectures of everyday governance; provincial identity and urban-rural relationships; spaces of domesticity; histories of architectural expertise; and the relationship between architecture, material cultures, and people’s ‘life-worlds’. I am particularly interested in hitherto invisible or uncharted sites and paradigms within postcolonial architectural studies.

My early work for my PhD thesis explored the architecture and urban development of provincial administrative towns of nineteenth century Bengal, colonial India. It was shortlisted for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) President’s Award for Research for Outstanding PhD Thesis 2011. I have since then developed it further for my forthcoming book Colonial Margins: Spatial Cultures of Provincial Governance in Eastern India (Bloomsbury Visual Arts and Culture, expected 2020).

My recent research on the architectural/spatial implications of British colonial ‘paper-bureaucracy’ in India won the 2019 RIBA President’s Award for Research in Architectural History and Theory, as well as the 2019 RIBA President’s Medal for Research across all categories. Amongst other recent works is a substantial chapter on the architecture of colonial South Asia 1750-1950, in the Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History of Architecture, 21st Edition (2019), which narrates an accessible survey-type history through a critical postcolonial frame. Presently, I am looking at questions of field and archivewithin postcolonial histories; and at the role of civil engineers – a comparatively understudied group – in building knowledges and built-landscapes of c. 1900-late 1960s Bengal, India.

In keeping with my interest in the marginal, the everyday and the ephemeral, I was also part of a collaborative research project (2016-2019) – alongside academics from University of California, Santa Barbara (PI) and University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee – on the architecture and urban geography of community-built temporary pavilions erected for Durgapuja, a vast, city-wide annual festival in Calcutta. In June 2019, together with Prof. Jane Rendell, I initiated the groundwork for the Bartlett School of Architecture (BSA) Centre for Architectural History and Theory. I was also an active collaborator in the recently created curriculum entitled ‘Race and Space’ meant for the Bartlett Faculty staff and students. 

Teaching summary

Having taught in design studios and history/theory courses for the past 15+ years, both in India and the UK, my current pedagogical approach draws actively upon my background, experiences and transdisciplinary research. As such, I deal with architecture and urbanism in diverse, (mostly) non-western contexts; but more generally with the relationship between built-form and cultural practice; ‘ordinary’, ‘small-scale’ or ‘peripheral’ spaces and practices; and alternative historical discourses within mainstream architectural history. I enjoy drawing active links between design and history and theory and combine architecture-specific approaches with those from history, anthropology, geography, cultural studies, and postcolonial and critical theories.

Since early 2019, I have also served as the BSA’s Director of Architectural History and Theory for the school’s 20+ programmes and about 80 teaching (full and part-time) staff, taking on various administrative, coordination and mentorship roles. 

My teaching at the Bartlett has spanned undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral levels, thus encompassing BSc Architecture Year 2, M. Arch Years 1 & 2, MA Architectural History, and PhD in Architectural History and Theory programmes. I also coordinate both small and large-cohort architectural history and theory modules, and supervise masters and PhD dissertations on South Asia and the Indian Ocean world, South-east Asia, East Asia, South America, Africa and the Middle East.

Amongst ~50 postgraduate dissertations that I have seen through to completion, several have won awards, e.g.  the RIBA Research Awards 2018; MAD Travel Fellowship 2018; the BSA’s MA Architectural History Prize 2017; and M. Arch History and Theory Prize 2016. My PhD students’ works span(ned) diverse contexts and themes: spaces of Somali migrants in post-Apartheid Cape Town, architectural pedagogy in China 1919-1949, early twentieth century critical architectural modernity in India, and the architecture of late 19^th/early or 20^th c. New York Chinatown. 

A key, recent pedagogic engagement of mine, as part of a collaborative Faculty (Equality, Diversity, Inclusion) working group, was the ‘Race’ and Space curriculum for Bartlett Faculty students and staff.  The curriculum/ resource sparks crucial questions around Eurocentrism, racism, inclusive curricula and institutional practices.

Publications

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