Team

Krupa Rajangam, Heritage Scholar-Conservation Architect

Founder-Director (Lead: Research, Education)

As a scholar-practitioner Krupa works interdisciplinarily through a humanities-based and community-engaged approach. She holds a PhD in Conservation Studies from NIAS-MAHE (2020). She commenced structured (doctoral) research with the aim to understand the place of Social or Community Value in the Heritage Conservation Process. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at Hampi World Heritage Site, her work evolved to deconstruct the heritage idea and everyday site conservation-management processes in particular socio-cultural and geographical contexts.

Her research interests overlap sociology, anthropology, social archaeology, modern history, human geography and urban studies to explicate the material practices of heritage and conservation as social-political processes that impinge on places and people, including not just resident communities but also heritage practitioners. Her current focus, based on UNESCO World Heritage sites, is tourism imaginaries, rural-urban geographies and socio-cultural place identities.

Professional interest includes, adaptive re-use of places, protected area regulations and social impact, and Pedagogic interest includes, interdisciplinary, humanities-based research methods and academic writing that bridges theory and practice.

She completed her Master's degree in Heritage Conservation from the University of York, UK in 2005 and her Bachelor's degree in Architecture from RV School of Architecture, Bengaluru in 1999.

She worked for two years at Peter Inskip and Peter Jenkins Architects, London, a renowned and reputed conservation firm in the UK, before returning to India. Prior to this she gained extensive experience in New Build primarily as Senior Architect with Shibanee & Kamal Architects (Total Environment).

She has been Visiting Faculty at PESU, DSCE, MSRIT and BMS Schools of Architecture, all based in Bengaluru. Currently she is (Adjunct) Professor at DSCA and teaches an Open Course at APU.

Research awards include the Zibby Garnett Traveling Fellowship (2004) to make a comparative study of conservation principles in the East and West with SPAFA, Bangkok; the Charles Wallace India Trust Fully Funded Award (2010) to undertake independent collaborative research on techniques to involve (rural) communities in heritage conservation, with Dr Zeynep Aygen at the University of Portsmouth, UK as a Visiting Scholar. More recently has she held a NIAS Fellowship during the doctoral study period and received an INTACH Research Grant to undertake fieldwork at Hampi WHS.

She is registered with the Council of Architecture, India and Life member of Association of British Scholars-Karnataka Chapter and INTACH. Past memberships include English Heritage, ICOMOS-UK and INTACH-UK. She is Editorial Board Member of the T & F international peer-reviewed journal Conservation & Management of Archaeological Sites.