Dr Gauri Bharat, Professor and Dean at the School of Architecture, is a seasoned academic and researcher with a rich blend of industry and academic experience. Interested in how people engage with built environments, Dr Bharat researches indigenous architecture and material histories and has published extensively on this topic.

She edited ‘Indigenous Architecture in India: Exploring Plural Lifeworlds’ (Routledge, 2024), co-edited with Sadan Jha ‘The Social Life of Streets in India – Histories, Contestations, Subjectivities’ (Bloomsbury, 2022), and authored ‘In Forest, Field, and Factory – Adivasi Habitations Through Twentieth Century Asia’ (SAGE – Yoda Press, 2019). She has received research grants from the Graham Foundation and has presented papers at national and international conferences.

At Anant, Dr Bharat focuses on reimagining architecture as a critical and creative practice and training students to become catalysts of social and environmental change through meaningful design of the built environment. Working together with the faculty and students, she aims to strengthen the School of Architecture as an enterprising and joyful community of learners.

Dr Bharat holds a PhD in Art History from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom. She also holds a Master of Arts (Architecture) from the National University of Singapore and a Bachelor of Architecture from the School of Architecture, CEPT University, Ahmedabad.

Before joining Anant, Dr Bharat was a Senior Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University and led the Postgraduate Programme in Architectural History and Research. She has widely experimented with teaching architecture as a social art, and her pedagogic approach was recognised with the Berkeley Prize Teaching Fellowship in 2014 and the Erasmus Teaching Mobility grant in 2016.

Beyond academia, Dr Bharat is a food enthusiast and is particularly serious about coffee. Her other interests include collecting books, crocheting, travelling with her family, geology, and bird watching.