Sonali Dhanpal

Living in Princely cities: Residential extensions, bungalow culture and the production of everyday spaces in Bangalore and Mysore, South India ca.1831

My research investigates the understudied agency of the princely state and its mutually constitutive architecture and urbanism. I focus on the state of Mysore—an anomalous ‘progressive’ state in South India and its royal and administrative capital cities: Mysore and Bangalore. Using a repertoire of agents and tools, my research examines two strategic sites, where the princely administration and its residents manoeuvred the interstices of indirect rule in these two capital cities. At the scale of the city, I examine residential extensions and at the scale of the individual, I investigate material culture and society through the domain of the home.

Supervisors: Martin Beattie, Zeynep Kezer