Category public writing
A Concrete Solution
Work from my Master’s degree on the social dimensions of concrete houses in India was featured in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Letters & Science Newsletter. Many thanks to Kai Wen Li for taking interest in my work and for writing this excellent article. https://ls.wisc.edu/news/a-concrete-solution
From Gulf Houses to NRI Flats: On Kochi’s “World Class” Urban Transformation
I published a short essay from PhD dissertation in Ala: A Kerala Studies Blog. Many thanks to Shilpa Menon and the Editors of Ala for thoughtful comments and feedback that have significantly improved this essay. Read the full essay here, https://alablog.in/issues/68/gulf-houses-to-nri-flats/ As you exit the “world’s first green airport” in Nedumbassery on the outskirts of […]
THE CRITICAL CLASSROOM
Below is a list of teaching resources that I drew up as a supplement to my forthcoming (2023, 55(2)) Antipode article, “Class, Caste, Gender, and the Materiality of Cement Houses in India“. It’s part of new initiative started by antipodeonline.org, called The Critical Classroom, that aims “to create a commons resource of radical geography teaching […]
CONCRETE CLIMATES
This is a short essay that I wrote for the South Asian Urban Climates blog which is a “platform for discussion, collaboration, and emerging scholarship on the histories, power structures, and material assemblages that make up the climate in and across South Asian cities.” Many thanks to Nida Rehman and Aparna Parikh for bringing this […]
Remembering Didi Contractor, a Champion of Indigenous Styles in Built Environments
I wrote something for The Wire in memory of Didi Contractor who passed away on 5 July, 2021. Many thanks to Himanshu Burte for his encouragement. Please find the article here.
SPACES WITH “NATURAL” HABITAT
The following interview was published in Sawdust on the occasion of World Environment Day where I speak about the need to deconstruct our understandings of “nature” and “sustainability” to include social relations, people, and labor. To read the complete interview please visit https://sawdust.online/interviews/sustainable-architecture/ Spaces with Natural Habitat “We need to deconstruct our notion of “sustainable architecture” […]
Episode 3: Architect + Geographer Siddharth Menon
The following podcast interview was conducted by Lauren Gifford for Carbon Social Club where we spoke about concrete, architecture, and rapidly transforming urban environments in the Global South. To listen to the whole interview, please visit https://www.carbonsocialclub.com/episodes/episode-3-architect-geographer-siddharth-menon
The Social Life of Concrete
The following interview was conducted by GBSNP Varma and published in Fountain Ink Magazine in their February 2020 issue. To read the whole interview, please visit https://fountainink.in/qna/the-social-life-of-concrete- Things around us shape us, influence us, and create an experience. They shape our environments, our economies and our life in perhaps not so obvious a manner. Things […]
Infrastructure’s Inequalities: A Conversation with Nikhil Anand and Nausheen Anwar
The following podcast was published by Edge Effects Magazine on December 3, 2019. To read/listen to the whole podcast please visit edgeeffects.net/anand-anwar-infrastructures/ After World War II, large infrastructural projects in the Global South like dams, canals, roads, electric power stations, and water pipes were associated with ideas of development, progress, and modernity. These projects promised […]
Decolonizing Infrastructure in India and the US: A Conversation with Malini Ranganathan
Recently, many scholars in the humanistic social sciences have begun to focus on the more-than-human agency of nonhuman natures, things, objects, and materials. Within this posthuman turn, objects are not simply inert backdrops for the ordering of social life but are actively involved in creating new sociopolitical orders. Infrastructure has emerged as a useful analytical […]
Siddharth Menon 