Angan Symposium

‘Angan’ refers to the courtyard — a spatial and cultural typology that functions as a site of gathering, exchange, belonging, and visual dialogue. It is a central space produced relationally through the plurality and diversity of its surrounding contexts. 

We invite scholars, educators, and practitioners to participate in this peer-reviewed international symposium dedicated to advancing critical scholarship grounded in South Asian design histories, pedagogies and futures.

The term South Asia is geographically descriptive, yet politically and historically complex. It carries the weight of postcolonial nation-building, partition, migration, diaspora, informal economies, linguistic plurality, caste and labor hierarchies, and regional based knowledge systems. SADEA joins the ongoing endeavor to critically question how South Asia is positioned within global design discourse by inviting participants to reflect on and challenge these themes through scholarship and practice.

How do postcolonial histories shape design education? In what ways do migration and diaspora reconfigure authorship, collaboration, and methodology? How do region-based practices unsettle dominant hierarchies that separate art from craft, or formal design from indigenous and regional based production?

*South Asia includes, but is not limited to, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, and diasporic communities worldwide.