The landscape of digital humanities, corollary to the rapid social and technical evolutions, undergoes a constant and profound methodological transformation, necessitating a continuous and critical reevaluation of contemporary methods and practices used by DHers. In light of this, the upcoming session of DHARTI Speaks series convenes to examine the complex intersections & evolution of design, historiography, and digital archiving. We are privileged to host Ishita Shah—distinguished curator, designer, historian, and the founding visionary behind Curating for Culture.

Join us for her talk, “My Dilemmas, as a Curator: Research, Writing, or Coding”, where she reflects on the challenges and choices that shape contemporary curatorial practice.
Date: Tuesday, 31 March 2026
Time: 7:30 PM IST
Exclusively for DHARTI members
This members-only event is part of our ongoing series that brings together scholars, practitioners, and educators in Digital Humanities to reflect, debate, and imagine new futures. To join DHARTI, if you haven’t already, visit: http://dhdharti.in

About Ishita:
Ishita Shah is trained as an interior designer and an architectural historian. Over the last few years, she has been developing a community-based curatorial practice, which focuses on cultural preservation and creative collaborations across individuals, families, and organizations with an intention to deepen the culture for archiving in India and across South Asia. Her work is situated under the aegis of a self-founded collective, Curating for Culture. She is also a consulting archivist and/or curator at Pattani Archives, Glenmorgan Estate, and Shreyas Foundation. She also teaches across various programs and cities.

Two critical projects that she has self-initiated are: Constructing Personal Archives, an incubation program for archival projects from across South Asia, and Women of Vaastukala Archive, a digital repository of oral histories of women practitioners from architecture, design, planning, and allied disciplines in India.

Ishita has previously worked with Queer Ink to lay foundation for Queer India Archives as a consulting archivist, Biome Environmental Solutions Pvt. Ltd. to curate their recent publication, Biome Diaries: Ecological Architecture from India (2021), as well as collaborated with organizations like the National Centre for Biological Sciences, INTACH Bengaluru, Arthshila Ahmedabad, the Ministry of Culture India; to curate and develop a wide range of public interpretation projects. Before this, she was an educator and the coordinator of the UNESCO Chair in Culture, Habitat, and Sustainable Development at the Srishti-Manipal Institute of Art, Design, and Technology. She has also been the founding archivist and oral historian at CEPT Archives and worked with the Royal Institute of British Architects (UK), INSITE Magazine, SPADE India Research Cell, and Design Innovation and Craft Resource Centre.

Ishita is also a Graham Foundation Grant recipient (2020), a Khoj CISA Fellow (2021), a former fellowship student and community member at The Alternative Art School (2022), and a TEDx Speaker (2024). Ishita is also a contributor to the Feminist Spatial Practices Group and a thematic Director at PATIO Network.

You can follow Ishita Shah’s work here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ishitasha/

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