I was interviewed as part of the ‘Spotlights’ series run by the Department of Geography & Environment, LSE where they put a ‘spotlight’ on different members of the department each month. Many thanks to Isobel Jones for the questions. You can read the interview here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/geography-and-environment/spotlights

What was your route into academia, and what advice would you give to students interested in becoming researchers?
 
I had a very unconventional route into academia. I received my undergraduate degree in Architecture from the University of Mumbai in 2011. Thereafter, I practiced professionally as an architect in India for five years. But my practice was very unconventional. I used local building materials, like earth and bamboo, and worked in tandem with local craftspeople to design and build earth buildings in different parts of rural and peri-urban India to address issues of poverty, inequality, and environmental change (see architecture work sample). After five years of doing this kind of work, I realized the limitations of professional practice. I had encountered some questions during practice that need more time and space to answer, something that practice didn’t allow. While speaking to mentors and well-wishers about these concerns, they directed me towards academia and specifically the discipline of Geography that could help me answer some of these questions. That’s how I stumbled into academia.
 
There is immense value in practice, whatever form that might take. I would not have developed insights about the construction industry had I not spent half a decade in it. These insights have been crucial for my development as a researcher, as someone who now studies how cities and infrastructures are being produced in the global South. I would urge students who are interested in becoming researchers to spend a few years away from academia in any industry before starting their PhDs. This would not only give them a chance to be sure about the academic pathway before diving into it but would also allow them to develop key insights about how the world operates that would be beneficial for their growth as researchers. 
 
 
 
What was it like to attend the first-year undergraduate field trip to Juniper Hall, and what stands out to you about that experience?
 
I didn’t know much about the English countryside apart from books I had read and films I had watched as a child growing up in Mumbai. In that sense, the first-year undergraduate field trip to Juniper Hall was a unique learning experience. I learned how wet the English countryside could be and how one must always be prepared for this. It was also fascinating to witness how quickly the landscape changes just an hour outside of London. You move from big bustling city and grey concrete to quiet fields and green rolling hills in no time. I think, the highlight of my trip was examining the stunning Surrey landscape through guided fieldwork exercises with my colleagues and the undergraduate students. I believe that fieldwork, broadly construed, is one of the things that makes Geography unique as a discipline and I’m glad that I’m part of a department that takes it seriously. 
 
 
 
What do you enjoy doing outside of your research and teaching?
 
Unfortunately, academia has a way of beating out wider interests because you spend so much time thinking about research and teaching. In that sense, I don’t have too many interests. I’m pretty much a one-trick pony. But one thing I do enjoy and that keeps me going on a day-to-day basis is football. Ever since I started playing, following, and understanding football seriously as a child, I have been hooked by the game. I have also been a “recovering” Arsenal FC fan for 22 years. I fell in love with them in 2004 ever since I saw the mercurial French forward Thierry Henry tearing apart hapless English Premier League defences on my TV screen in Mumbai. He was part of French manager Arsene Wenger’s “Invincibles” team that went a whole league season unbeaten without losing a single game, a feat that has never been achieved (and will probably never be achieved again) in English football. That was also the last time Arsenal won the league title. Since then, I’ve been trying to move away from my Arsenal fandom but as fate would have it, the LSE job has brought me more close to north London than I ever have been. I went for my first Arsenal FC game at the Emirates Stadium a couple of months ago. And we might actually win the league title this year after a long arduous wait of 22 years. Alas, the fandom continues (as evidenced by the Arsenal scarf hanging in my office).