Omitted from history: How workers on India's building sites mediated twentieth-century modernity

OMHI aims to complicate hegemonic and linear understandings of ‘modernisation’ in India’s 20th-century urban and architectural historiography by tapping into the experience of lesser studied and often marginalized actors who built India’s modern cities.

Investigations of urban transformation as it occurred on the ground, rather than on the drawing table, will provide new insights into how building practice was (or was not) shaped by the interplay between local building traditions and aspirations, and (neo)colonial influences, as they intersected with the major social, economic, and political developments of high modernity, including India’s Independence in 1947.

The project focuses on the city of Pune (1917-1992) and involves uncelebrated architects, building contractors, engineers, and construction workers (and their descendants) in a process of participatory knowledge making that examines two unusual datasets: photographs and oral recollections.

The historiographical objective is to identify changes and continuities in construction work and their implications for architectural change.

Methodologically, the project will advance the state of the art in construction historiography by testing novel participatory techniques for data collection and interpretation, both in digital and analogue form. Such methods are highly needed to reveal more plural histories that include perspectives ‘from below’.

OMHI integrates research and training, while ensuring reciprocal knowledge transfers.

It is shaped by interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaborations that will significantly expand my global network and train me in new, cutting-edge skills in the field of (post)colonial architectural history: digital humanities, visual analysis, and open science.

Collected data will be digitally archived to stimulate long-term cooperation between South Asian and European scholars from different research fields related to the built environment, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies.