Heritage is not limited to grand monuments, historic buildings, or cultural artefacts like food and clothing. Instead, it is embedded in everyday spaces and practices—old walking geographies, fairgrounds that once brought communities together, ponds and tanks that shaped water cultures, and weekly markets that served as both economic and social hubs. These elements are increasingly getting marginalised in dominant understandings of heritage. How do we write heritage? Whose heritage gets written? Who gets to decide what is preserved and valued? Beyond documentation, writing heritage is a political act—one that raises fundamental questions about citizenship and belonging. At our Online Talk #BeyondDocumentation, architect, urban researcher, publisher and writer Nisha Nair Gupta delves into the power of writing as a means of reclaiming and redefining heritage.

About the speaker

Nisha Nair-Gupta is an architect, urban researcher, publisher and writer. She is currently pursuing her PhD at IIT Bombay at the Ashank Desai Centre for Policy Studies. Her research looks at urban mobility - particularly walking, from the lens of gender, sociality and political economy of spaces. She also spearheads the research and publishing initiative 'People Place Project’ that is invested in creating consciousness about the built environment through urban research, pedagogy and publication. Under this initiative, she has curated and edited seven books, her latest being People Called Ladakh and Awaaz - Voices from Govandi.