Platform for Architectural Transfers in the Indian Ocean rim
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About
PATIO


PATIO is an independent trans-national network of scholars working on the histories of transfer of knowledge, materials, and labour relating to architecture and construction across the Indian Ocean Rim. Through its two programs, namely PATIO Conversations and PATIO Collaborations, it aims to connect Early Career Researchers possessing local or regional expertise with each other and with the global scholarly landscape.
It is registered as a “Charitable Society” under the Societies Registration Act of 1860 under Registration No. Pune/0000107/2024.

Managing
Committee


   
Saptarshi Sanyal is an architectural historian, a conservation architect, and an educator in architecture. He is currently an Assistant Professor at New Delhi’s School of Planning and Architecture. Saptarshi’s research interests lie at the intersections of colonialism, architectural modernity, intellectual history and the histories of work and production. It lays emphasis on the historiography of architecture as a process rather than just a product. His doctoral thesis, completed at the Bartlett, University College London, won an honourable mention at the University of California at Berkeley’s South Asia Art and Architecture Dissertation Prize (2023). Saptarshi's research has appeared in journals such as the Architecture Research Quarterly, ABE – Architecture Beyond Europe, SPACE and Landscape. He has taught architectural history and theory at the Bartlett, and contributed his research-driven teaching through lectures and workshops conducted in over twenty institutes in India.  
Sarah Melsens is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and FLAME University in Pune. Her research centres on the history and ethnography of architecture and construction in colonial and postcolonial South Asia. She has a particular interest in everyday architecture and the contributions of ‘forgotten’ city builders such as Indian engineers in the colonia Public Works Department, unsung architect-entrepreneurs, and building labour. Her current project looks at mobilising building site photographs in events of participatory historiography. Sarah is co-editor of 'ABE Journal - Architecture Beyond Europe' and  'Construction History, International Journal of The Construction History Society'. She has taught at various architecture colleges in India including at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, and is a founding member of the Pune Architectural History Archive (PAHA).
         
Saptarshi Sanyal           Sarah Melsens         (President)              (General Secretary)

Catherine Desai                  Ishita Shah  (Vice President)                    (Treasurer)

Executive
Committee



Amit Srivastava                    Peter Scriver  
    Gauri Bharat                         Priya Jain


Deepa Ramswamy           Yakin Kinger  
 
Sonali Dhanpal  

Advisory
Board



Types of
Membership

Individual member: Any individual who desires to further the objectives of the society and participates in at least one PATIO activity per annum. Subscription to the newsletter is sufficient as registration for individual membership. This also includes all members taking up active roles including research fellows. 
  
Institutional member: An educational institution or organization which commits to long-term engagement with PATIO under one or more thematic umbrellas of its PATIO Collaborations program. Institutional members appoint researchers from amongst their academic staff to become PATIO research fellows and ensure that research fellows are granted a minimum amount of time exclusively for research.        

Patron member:  Any individual or institution who has donated an amount to the society to further its cause shall be entitled to patron membership of the society.


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Disclaimer: This networking initiative is partly funded by the European Union (Grant No 101108229). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.