About Me

I am a design researcher, educator, architect and planner, working in sensitive contentious landscapes. My environmental practice is focused on creating new pathways in design, education and policy. The research approach I work with gathers wet ontologies, situated practices, movement, and the politics of the colonial eye. The fields my practice is entangled in include art and design, environmental humanities, environmental philosophy and the ecological sciences.
 
For me, research is a trans/anti-disciplinary practice, as I investigate and imagine creative everyday practices, possibilities for new environmental policies, and eco-pedagogies that value the dynamism of the environment and its diverse dwellers. Here, design seeks to gather and build new futures that are inventive, responsive, inclusive and participative of places, more-than-human inhabitants, materials and practices, through immersive primary research.

I'm actively engaged with the following organisations and networks:
Steering Committee Member, Networking with Plants in the Anthropocene
Member, Consortium of Environmental Philosophers
Member, Coastal and Marine Research Group, Royal Geographic Society
Member, IUCN Commission on Education & Communication

I currently hold the Dr. TMA Pai Endowment Chair in Adaptive Ecologies & Climate Extremes - Decolonising the Anthropocene (2023-present).
 
I grew up in Malaysia, have traveled extensively, and currently reside in rural Bangalore. I am also a dancer, walker, wanderer and photographer, and novice equestrian and cellist.

My professional education:
Bachelor of Architecture from Manipal Institute of Technology (1998).
Master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania (2000).
PhD in Art, Design & Transdisciplinary Studies from Manipal Academy of Higher Education (2021).