Research Statement

Theoretical Foundation

My work is grounded in critical heritage interpretation, values-based conservation, and inclusive approaches to architecture and pedagogy. I conceptualize historic buildings not as inert relics, but as culturally inscribed environments embedded with layered social, political, and material narratives produced through use, memory, and power. Trained formally in architecture and heritage interpretation, my research interrogates fabric-centric and technocratic conservation practices prevalent in South Asia. Instead of treating heritage sites as static repositories, I advance an interpretive approach that foregrounds original functional logics, contested histories, and embedded community narratives, reframing heritage environments as platforms for renewed cultural discourse and ethical meaning-making.

Methodological Frameworks

Methodologically, I integrate qualitative inquiry, including archival research, semi-structured interviews, oral histories, and participatory (PRA) techniques, with digital documentation and spatial analysis. These include photogrammetry and three-dimensional mapping alongside structured qualitative analysis and protocol-based documentation systems. In applied research contexts, I prioritize reproducible and institutionally adoptable methodologies that can be maintained by public agencies and early-career professionals. Digital capture and modelling are explicitly linked to interpretive outputs such as spatial narratives, heritage trails, and augmented overlays where appropriate, ensuring that documentation functions as a meaning-making process rather than a purely technical exercise.

Operationalizing Polyphonic Interpretation

Central to my practice is the elicitation and co-authoring of community narratives, situating heritage interpretation within lived socio-political contexts and local value systems. I examine how digital and immersive technologies can either reproduce epistemic exclusion or enable interpretive redistribution when critically curated. This approach underpins my work with politically stranded Bihari communities, climate-threatened Mughal sites, and historic neighbourhoods of Old Dhaka. Participation here is not symbolic inclusion but a condition of method. My research emphasises co-authored outputs, training toolkits, recording protocols, and shared interpretive materials, that communities and institutions can adapt, govern, and sustain.

Research Implications and Interpretive Inquiry

Academic: My peer-reviewed publications and edited proceedings examine how heritage meaning is produced through architectural form, interpretive framing, and institutional mediation rather than material fabric alone. Drawing on case-based research in Old Dhaka, Geneva Camp, and Mughal-era sites, my work interrogates authorised heritage discourse, dissonance, and marginality, and advances polyphonic interpretation as a spatial and evidentiary practice. Conference convening and post-workshop edited volumes function as extended research spaces where these questions are collectively developed rather than merely disseminated.

Policy/Institutional: My engagement with heritage governance has focused on how interpretive authority is stabilised through documentation, nomination, and professional training. This includes research contributions to two UNESCO Tentative List nominations accepted in 2023 and the development of documentation and recording frameworks for early-career conservation professionals. Rather than treating policy alignment as an outcome, I analyse these processes as sites where evidentiary thresholds, authenticity claims, and interpretive limits are negotiated and normalised.

Public/Community: My field-based work investigates how interpretation operates when communities are positioned as knowledge holders rather than audiences. Through heritage trail media, virtual heritage environments, and community-situated narrative protocols, I examine how access, authorship, and visibility are structured within interpretive systems. During my UNESCO-WHIPIC Fellowship, I developed the Spatial Narratives Integration Protocol (SNIP) to operationalise these questions within digitally documented built environments, using photogrammetry and spatial sequencing to test how plural narratives can be embedded without collapsing difference.

Last updated: April 2026