Vyjayanthi Rao

Vyjayanthi RAO is an anthropologist, writer, and curator. Her work explores speculation, memory, heritage, design, and the built environment more broadly. She combines multiple representational techniques, including ethnography, mapping, video and other forms of visual research, to communicate her research to an audience within and beyond academia.
Vyjayanthi teaches urban studies at the Spitzer School of Architecture in New York, and she is a Senior Editor of the journal Public Culture (Duke University Press). In 2016, she founded an artist collective called Samooha, bringing together anthropology, architecture, and activism to explore cultures of self-reliance and self-building through creative practice.