Speakers
Women make up more than half of the construction workforce in India, and usually earn half as much. This roundtable public workshop asks how we can contribute to building awareness and solidarity with women construction workers, across the barriers of gender and class that may separate us. What connects us to the women toiling in construction?
This workshop begins with a roundtable discussion between an architect, a historian, and a social worker reflecting on their engagements with women construction workers. Following the roundtable, workshop participants of all backgrounds are invited to bring their own reflections and traces regarding women in construction, from stories to poems, drawings to objects. These will serve as material for a collective response and creative counter-archive to invisibility and indifference.
This workshop is part of the project ‘Omitted from History: How workers on India’s Building Sites Mediated Twentieth-century Modernity’, funded by the Horizon Europe programme (Grant No 101108229).
This event is a part of the “Expanding Agency and Archival Silences” exhibition. Find the full schedule here.
In collaboration with:
Venue: Seminar Halls
Speakers
Sarah Melsens
Sarah Melsens is an architect and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at CNRS and FLAME University, Pune, researching the history and ethnography of architecture and construction in colonial and postcolonial India. She co-edits the journals Architecture Beyond Europe (ABE Journal) and Construction History, and is a founding trustee of the Pune Architectural History Archive. She has taught at various architecture colleges in India, including CEPT University, and co-founded the scholarly network Platform for Architectural Transfers in the Indian Ocean rim (PATIO).
Sharath R Nayak
Sharath Nayak is an ecological architect based in Bangalore, with Biome since its inception in 2008. After undergraduate studies in Manipal (2002), he freelanced in Mangalore before joining Chitra Vishwanath Architects, later incorporated as Biome. He completed a master’s at Chur, Switzerland (2007), interning with Roger Boltshauser Architekten, Zurich. He has worked on over 200 projects at Biome, including Govardhan Eco Village, the Sirsi houses, and Hamsa’s House. In 2012, he co-authored “Our Experiences with Rammed Earth,” which won Best Extra-European Paper at RESTAPIA, Valencia.
Prameela V
Prameela V is CEO of Sampark, a Bangalore-based NGO focused on improving the lives of migrant construction workers and their children, and working with rural women in Koppal and Varanasi. She has conducted gender and enterprise trainings for women’s self-help groups and NGO staff nationally and internationally, and managed projects improving rural livelihoods and empowering women, working with international organizations including the World Bank, FAO, UNDP, Plan International, and GIZ, and national organizations like CARE India, ILO New Delhi, Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives.
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