Soumya (he/him) is a Ph.D. Candidate in Architecture (History and Theory) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.  He has a Master's in Urban Design from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, and a Bachelor of Architecture from the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, Kolkata, India. 

His scholarly interests include postcolonial urban geographies, neoliberal developmentalism, digital technocracy, urban informality, Global South, and South Asia. His Ph.D. dissertation broadly explores the contested systems of architectural production in the context of urban India in the 21st century. He also serves on the Membership Committee of the Society of Architectural Historians since 2022.

Soumya is an awardee of the Humanities Research Institute Graduate Fellowship for 2023-24. He is a former recipient of the Illinois Distinguished Fellowship for his Ph.D. studies. He also received the Nicholson Fellowship from the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the UofI to attend the School of Criticism and Theory Summer Program 2022 at Cornell University. He noted his reflections here.

Soumya loves teaching and has worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for graduate-level history, theory, and design courses in Architecture. Currently, he is co-teaching a design studio with architect Patricia Saldaña Natke, founding partner of UrbanWorks, Chicago. He has also worked as an assistant instructor with architect Mark Raymond for analog, a collaborative graduate design studio between the Illinois School of Architecture and Unit 13, Graduate School of Architecture, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has served as an external reviewer in various design studios in India, South Africa, and the USA.

As a person of color in the USA, Soumya cares deeply about issues of diversity and belonging and believes that the emerging institutional efforts of DEI require continuous critical scrutiny. With Emilee Mathews, he co-authored a successful grant proposal at Illinois that can help the architecture library to be more diverse and inclusive, co-moderated a panel discussion, and co-reflected on the experience that was featured in Ricker Report, a student-run publication of the Illinois School of Architecture. 

You can reach him at soumyad2@illinois.edu