Vishal Khandelwal

Vishal Khandelwal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. He specializes in modern and contemporary architecture and design with a focus on South Asia. Khandelwal is completing a book manuscript on the history of design education in postcolonial India through the archives and work of specific product designers, graphic designers, photographers, architects, textile designers, craftspeople, intellectuals, and bureaucrats, all of whom were affiliated with the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad (established in 1961) during the academy’s first few decades in existence.

The doctoral dissertation that forms the basis of this manuscript was awarded the UC Berkeley South Asia Art & Architecture Dissertation Prize for 2022. Alongside the generosity of a Newhouse Center Faculty Fellowship from Wellesley College (2025-26), the project has been supported by the 2020 Carter Manny Writing Award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; a Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship from the University of Michigan (2020-21); stipends from the Decorative Arts Trust (2019) and the Rockefeller Archive Center (2019); and a Faculty Grant from the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University (2024-25).

Khandelwal’s scholarship has been published in the Journal of Modern Craft and in ARTMargins. He completed his B.A. from DePauw University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.