Shreyas Srivatsa

I’m co-creator and director of Living Labs Network & Forum, collaborating and learning with communities and institutions in the Dakkhani Region (Hyderabad-Karnataka region) in India. I share the dream with my fellow co-creators at LLNaF, Team YUVAA, Aruvu Collaboratory, and Agamashaala to build an institution that cares for the place, communities, and its people. I have been engaging with the place, network, and institution since 2016 as a learner, mentor, resource person, and network coordinator. I co-learn with learners who are keen to learn about place-based research and reimagine community-academia collaborations through practice-based research. My work draws from more than seventeen years of experience as a researcher, practitioner, and academic. I work closely with Aruvu Collaboratory, Agamshaala, and Team YUVAA, and I’m a faculty at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore. The walled city of Bidar, Khanqah and Dargah culture, Restoration and conservation of Karez, Dasoha, and Agrarian knowledge production & labour by women are a few of the micro contexts that I’m interested to engage with. Qualified as an architect with an advanced training in areas related to human settlements, my work is at the intersection of the fields of settlement studies; southern urbanism; critical heritage studies; climate change and adaptation; urban livelihoods; and development studies.