Krupa Rajangam
Bengaluru, Karnataka| Grant Category: | Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellowships |
| Project Title: | Conservation, Contestation and Conflict at World Heritage Sites: Urbanism and Spatio-temporal Politics at the Fragmented Landscape of Hampi, India |
| Field of Study: | Urban and Regional Planning |
| Home Institution: | Independent Scholar, Bengaluru, Karnataka |
| Host Institution: | University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia, PA |
| Grant Start Month: | August 2023 |
| Duration of Grant: | Twenty-four months |
Brief Bio:
Dr. Krupa Rajangam is a humanities-based heritage scholar and conservation practitioner. In her research, she draws on anthropology and social geography to interpret nature-culture conservation practices, particularly the construction of socio-cultural place identities, urban-rural geographies, and tourism imaginaries. Her work is community-engaged, with a focus on public dissemination of research.
Dr. Rajangam earned her bachelor’s in architecture in 1999 from the RV College of Engineering, Bengaluru and her master’s in conservation studies in 2005 from the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, University of York, UK. In 2020, she completed her doctorate in conservation studies at the National Institute of Advanced Studies and Manipal Academy of Higher Education.
Dr. Rajangam is the Founder-Director of a collective called “Saythu… Linking People and Heritage” and an editorial board member of the Taylor & Francis journal, Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites (CMAS). She runs an immersive field school that is driven by and teaches critical theory, experiential field-based education, and interdisciplinary methods of learning.
Through her Fulbright-Nehru project, Dr. Rajangam is working to contribute to global debates on archaeological and heritage place-making, social geography, and social violence as outcomes of UNESCO World Heritage inscription, boundary demarcation, and management. The need for such studies is pressing urban-centric development of historic landscapes, contrary to the intent of practice and policy, is deepening social marginalization.