Mrinalini Rajagopalan

Mrinalini Rajagopalan is an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of History of Art and Architecture, part of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on colonialism’s impact on architecture and urbanism in modern India, with a particular emphasis on gender, nationalism, and global South studies. She teaches courses on global urbanism, architectural preservation, and anti-racist architectural history, including a seminar on Black Built America.

Education: PhD (2007), M.S. (2003), and B.Arch (1996) from University of California, Berkeley and University of Arkansas. Prior to academia, she practiced architecture in Malaysia and India, working with Pritzker laureate Balkrishna V. Doshi.

Her first monograph Building Histories (2016) received the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award. Current projects include a study of Begum Samru’s art and architecture (under contract) and research on Tata Corporation’s architectural outputs during India’s 20th-century transformations. She has held fellowships at MIT, NYU, and the National Humanities Center.

Awards include 2024 NEH Summer Stipend and 2023 Venetian Research Grant. Her work bridges architectural historiography with critical postcolonial theory, emphasizing marginalized voices in built environments.