Platform for Architectural Transfers in the Indian Ocean rim
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UPCOMING
CONVERSATION

Landscape, Ecology and Environment
08 October 2026, 5.30 pm IST

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 Ishita Sharma
(TU Delft)
Thomas Oommen
(University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

 Sonal Mithal
(CEPT University)


Circulations of Sweet and Salt
 






The borderlands of Kutch and Sindh, between India and Pakistan, consist of watery terrains shaped by multiple rivers, the Arabian Sea, and the salt marshes known as the Rann of Kutch. Different varieties of grass, marine organisms, camels, soils and waters compose these geographies, moving across territorial and administrative classifications of the nation, state and district. The rann, its inhabitants and its intertidal vocabularies are a useful prism through which to think about other landscapes and geographical classifications that permeate both colonial and postcolonial worlds, such as the wilderness, forest, desert and marsh or the mangrove. In Kutch, geological and ecological actors, community histories, vocabularies and ways of navigating these submerged grounds point to alternatives in how these geographies are perceived, placing movement, circulation and a shifting ground as constitutive characters of the region. Thinking with the Surajbari prawn and the Kharai camel, the research questions dominant forms of oppression and marginalisation, demonstrating the difficulty in framing environmental or ecological issues without taking into consideration labour, emotion, and intimacy as crucial components of the relationship between people, animals and the ground.





Monsoon Modernities: Prawns,  Plankton and Developmentalism
on the Malabar Coast of Kerala ca.1950-70





How do we look at oceanic life like plankton, prawns, alongside buildings and documents as archives to read a littoral modernity? I look at two projects focused on the ocean from the period between 1950 and 1970. First, an early and outlying moment of the new Indian nation-state when it looked at the Malabar Coast of Kerala through the prism of community development, and later "ocean development." The second, from the 1960s when mapping the Indian Ocean became a proxy for both global North-South co-operation and planetary exploration, leading to contemporary scientific understandings of climate change. I investigate both moments and the artefacts it generated – to explore how newness enters littoral locations like the Malabar coast and what it can tell us about the entanglement of Third World labor and North-South Politics in the production of the Indian ocean as an object of planetary scientific knowledge.






PAST
SESSIONS
PATIO Conversation No. 25 | Arnika Ahldag, Karthigesu Dhilashini & Anuj Daga
PATIO Conversation No. 24 | Soumitri Varadarajan, Piyush Das & Zahra Yasmoon
PATIO Conversation No. 23 |
Neena Zutshi & Pedro Guedes
PATIO Conversation No. 22 |
Sara Ather & Penny Unni
PATIO Conversation No. 21 | Farhan Karim & Amrita Madan
PATIO Conversation No. 20 | Spriya Sharma & Akshar Gujjar
PATIO Symposium | Solidarities in the Indian Ocean Rim
PATIO Conversation No. 18 | Anthony Wako & Binita Bose
PATIO Conversation No. 17 | Nathan Taylor-Gho & Malini Krishnankutty
PATIO Presentation | 
SAHANZ Conference 2025
PATIO Conversation No. 16 | Alican Taylan & Bérénice Girard
PATIO Conversation No. 15 |
Patrick Zamarian & Tanya Talwar
PATIO Conversation No. 14 | THINKmatter & The Funambulist
PATIO Conversation No. 13 | Priya Joseph & Vishvesh Kandolkar
PATIO Conversation No. 12 | Sarah Melsens, Ishita Shah & Pamudu Tennakoon
PATIO Conversation No. 11 |
Madhumati A., Zahra Yasmoon & Dipti Shukla
PATIO Conversation No. 10 | Nicholas Bill & Chee Kien Lai

PATIO Conversation No. 09 |
Swati Chattopadhyay & 
Megha Chand Inglis
PATIO Conversation No. 08 | Labib Hossain & Javairia Shahid
PATIO Conversation No. 07 |  Shaikhah Ali Alsalhi & 
Ali Javid     
PATIO Conversation No. 06 | Sarover Zaidi & Saniya Siddiqui
PATIO Conversation No. 05 | Mehwish Abid & Johann Peiris 
PATIO Conversation No. 04 | Meenakshi Jain & Richa Shah       
            
PATIO Conversation No. 03 | Anthony Wako & Dhaval Chauhan
PATIO Conversation No. 02 | Kairavi Maniar & Esa Shaikh
PATIO Conversations No. 01 | Chetan Sahasrabudhe & Ashmita Gupta
 






PATIO
CONVERSATIONS

PATIO Conversations are open to all; we aim to meet once a month, and scholars get an opportunity to share their work in progress. These presentations may be on a topic of their choice, which may relate to one or more of PATIO’s thematic umbrellas, or even critically reconsider and reconfigure our definition of particular themes. Participants may include independent scholars, Master's students, or aspiring PhD students as well as postdoctoral researchers who can contribute as speakers or choose to be an active part of the audience. Each such conversation foregrounds two scholars presenting their work for 20 minutes, followed by feedback from relevant respondents invited by the PATIO team in relation to the topic, and finally opening the discussion out to the larger audience. As such, PATIO Conversations offers a platform for critical dialogue while both disseminating recently completed work and providing mentorship to aspirant researchers, including potential PhD candidates. These sessions provide researchers with the resources to further their work related to the state of the field by involving active experts and engaging with current bodies of relevant work, published or otherwise. 
PATIO Conversations is directed by Saptarshi Sanyal and Sarah Melsens with the help of Thematic directors and Coordinators.