Project description
The role of workers in India’s modern urbanisation
India’s urban and architectural historiography of the 20th century often neglects the essential contribution of workers in constructing the nation’s cities. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the OMHI project will unveil the impact of construction labour on India’s 20th century urban transformation, with a specific focus on Pune (1917-1992). The project involves the active participation of underappreciated architects, building contractors, engineers, and construction workers, along with their descendants, to create knowledge. The investigation centres on historical photographs and oral recollections. By analysing practices as they occur on the building site, OMHI sheds light on how local traditions and (neo)colonial influences impacted architectural evolution and how these factors intersected with key societal, economic, and political developments during India's period of high modernity.
Objective
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.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistory
- social sciencessociologyanthropologyscience and technology studies
- humanitiesother humanitieslibrary sciencesdigital humanities
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global FellowshipsCoordinator
75794 Paris
France