Deepa is an architect and historian who grew up in Mumbai, India. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MA in Histories and Theories from Architectural Association, UK. She completed her undergraduate studies in architecture in Mumbai. She is currently an Assistant Professor of the History of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Houston. She has previously taught at Cooper Union and CEPT University, India, and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University.
Deepa's research examines land and environmental histories. Central to her research is unraveling the environmental, economic, and social inequities that emerge from material infrastructures, organizational practices, and financial instruments that shape the built environment. Deepa's ongoing project, "Reclaimed Lands," traces the colonial histories of land reclamation along Mumbai's coasts. The project won the Graham Foundation Grant for Research and the New Faculty Research Grant at the University of Houston in 2023. An excerpt of this research is forthcoming in Instituting Worlds: Architecture and Islands (published by Routledge and edited by Marko Jobst and Catherina Gabrielsson).
Deepa recently presented part of her book project for an invited talk at the Buell Center in Columbia University for the "Made Land" set of conversations on land and architecture in and out of the Americas. She also presented parts of the research at the Annual Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) conference in Montreal and the Annual Urban History Association (UHA) Conference in Pittsburgh. The research is an ongoing book project scheduled to be completed in 2025.
Deepa’s research has been supported by the Graham Foundation, Getty Research Institute, the Canadian Center of Architecture, Rockefeller Center, Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her works have been published in Neoliberalism on the Ground (University of Pittsburgh Press), Instituting Worlds: Architecture and Islands (Routledge, forthcoming), Places Journal, Journal of Planning History, Arris, Cite 104, Places Journal, CLOG magazine, and Arris.
Before her doctoral studies, Deepa was a practicing architect in Chicago and Mumbai.
