AT A GLANCE
Deepta Sateesh, PhD
Area of Practice: Shifting Landscapes and Wetscapes, Situated Knowledges and Climate Change, Design Research, Environmental Humanities, Environmental Philosophy
OVERVIEW
Deepta is a design researcher, educator, architect and planner, working in sensitive contentious landscapes. Her environmental practice is focused on creating new pathways in design, education and policy. The research approach she works with gathers wet ontologies, situated practices, movement, and the politics of the colonial eye, seeking new ways of engaging in and reading shifting terrains. The fields her practice is entangled in include art and design, environmental humanities, environmental philosophy and the ecological sciences. For Deepta, research is a transdisciplinary practice, as she investigates and imagines creative everyday practices, possibilities for new environmental policies, and eco-pedagogies that value the dynamism of the environment and its diverse dwellers. Deepta approaches design that seeks to gather and build new futures that are inventive, responsive, inclusive and participative of places, more-than-human inhabitants, materials and practices, and natural phenomena and processes, through immersive primary research.
EDUCATION
- Doctor of Philosophy in Art, Design & Transdisciplinary Studies, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India. June 2021.
- Master of City Planning, Department of City & Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. May 2000.
- Focus: Sustainable Development & Environmental Planning. Bachelor of Architecture, Manipal Institute of Technology, Mangalore University, India. February 1999.
- Focus: Climate-sensitive Architectural Design, Urban Design & Sustainability.
WORK EXPERIENCE
Head, Manipal Centre for DWEEPA – Manipal Academy of Higher Education, November 2023 – present.
Dr. TMA Pai Endowment Chair in Adaptive Ecologies & Climate Extremes – Decolonising the Anthropocene – Manipal Academy of Higher Education, July 2023 – present. https://www.deeptasateesh.in/adaptiveecologies.
Director, Odde Research Center – Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, May 2021 – December 2023. https://srishtimanipalinstitute.in/centers-and-labs/odde.
Dean, Research & Collaborations – Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, April 2020 – August 2023. http://srishtimanipalinstitute.in.
Director & Co-Founder, Design+Environment+Law Laboratory – Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, November 2012 – March 2021. For project details – www.dellaboratory.wordpress.com.
Academic Dean, Postgraduate Program – Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, June 2017 – July 2018.
Dean, School of New Humanities & Design – Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, 2015 – 2017.
Head of Strategy – Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, India, Feb. 2009 – Dec. 2014.
Urban Design/Planning Consultant – Atelier D’Arts & Architecture, Bangalore, India, Sept. – Dec. 2008.
Communications & Strategy Consultant – Self-employed, Bangalore, India, May 2006 – August 2008.
Business Development Executive – Jones Lang LaSalle, Bangalore, India, Oct. 2005-Apr. 2006.
Urban Environmental Planner – Wallace Roberts & Todd, LLC, Philadelphia, USA, Feb. 2004-Apr. 2005. www.wrtdesign.com.
Urban & Regional Planner – Sasaki Associates, Inc., Boston, USA, Sept. 2000-Jan. 2004. www.sasaki.com.
Urban Planner – Live Project at Department of City & Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania.Metropolitan Bogotá Transit Planning Project, Bogotá, Colombia, Sept. 1999 – May 2000.
Urban Planner – Wallace Roberts & Todd, LLC, Dallas, USA, June – August 1999.
Urban Planner – Live Project at Department of City & Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania. Economic Development of Mullica Township, Atlantic County, NJ, USA, Jan. – May 1999.
Architect – Internship at Hijjas Kasturi Associates Sdn., Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sept. 1996 – Jan. 1997.
INTEREST AREAS
Deepta’s research interests span design imagination and art practices, movement and place-making, walking as a meta-practice, more-than-human ontologies, knowledges of elemental regimes (wetness, wind, fire and such) or panchabhuta, and creative mixed methods that emerge from physical engagement in place. She asks critical questions around the practices of planning and architecture, of drawing lines that divide the world, while exploring ways of making relational lines of correspondences and interdependencies.
Deepta has published in the fields of environmental humanities and design, on climate change, movement and place-making of shifting cultivators, literature and tacit knowledge, eco-linguistics and ‘translation as method’, and the vegetal turn or plant humanities. Her work begins to challenge current ways of conservation action that utilize the development framework, and moves towards having a framework of its own in the historical and contemporary environmental crisis (global and local).
CURRENT PRACTICE AT SRISHTI
Dr. Sateesh currently holds the prestigious Dr. TMA Pai Endowment Chair in Adaptive Ecologies and Climate Extremes – Decolonising the Anthropocene, at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. This research work is anchored in the notion of kinship, uncovering diverse nature-culture relations amongst sentient beings and their dwelling environments. The proposed research will do this by immersive experiential understandings, doing research by moving through multiple ecologies, temporalities and practices, and materialities, to foreground intra-active entanglements, alongside challenging the dominant imaginations that prioritises the primacy of vision in contemporary conceptions of kinship and associated hierarchies. By engaging in walking and movement as an embodied methodology, weaving themes of temporality, decoloniality and fragile landscapes, this research aims to reveal new narratives and insights about the significance of kinship in watery terrains of Panchagangavali region that can frame new synchronous (adaptive) futures. The research is oriented towards working in soaking ecologies and the human and more-than-human communities that dwell in them, through practice-based research. Situated across the Panchagangavali River region, the works respond to contemporary environmental conflicts, of climate change, loss of material knowledge and increasing development pressures, through transdisciplinary approaches and situated creative practices, in order to re-enliven cultural practices and local knowledge that hold nature-culture correspondences. The hope is to initiate a paradigm shift in engaging in these sensitive places through art and design research towards sustainable and resilient futures, and will drive change on the ground by deep engagement and collaborations with community partners, initiating new eco-pedagogies, policy propositions, and art and design interventions. The project hopes to advance current understandings and generate new knowledge and relations, within and beyond the fields of environment, conservation, planning and policy design.
TEACHING PORTFOLIO
Deepta teaches transdisciplinary research approaches and methods to postgraduate students (Masters and Doctoral programs) at SMI, through a studio-seminar mode that is driven by practice, supported by concepts, and that gathers theories and critical questions around reading the environment to make sense of complexities of change.
CREATIVE PRACTICE & OUTREACH
Dr. Sateesh is actively engaged in international networks and projects including:
– South Asia Nodal Chair for the Consortium of Environmental Philosophers (https://thinkingintheworld.com/) (since 2020)
– Committee Member, Coastal and Marine Research Group, Royal Geographic Society (https://coastalmarineresearchgroup.wordpress.com/) (since 2021)
– Steering Committee Member, Networking with Plants in the Anthropocene (https://networkingwithplants.org/) (since 2021)
– Member, IUCN Commission on Education and Communication, South and Southeast Asia (https://iucn.org/our-union/commissions/commission-environmental-economic-and-social-policy/our-work/south-east-asia) (since 2017)
– Senior Advisor, Forum for Law, Environment, Development and Governance (FLEDGE.in) (since 2015)
She has presented her work at a number of international conferences and continually builds strong relations with academic peers for collaborative research, in the areas of design, wet ontologies, architecture, planning, conservation, ecology, environmental law and policy, and movement research and practices.
