Sarah Melsens is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre d’Etudes Sud-Asiatiques et Himalayennes (CNRS-EHESS) in Paris and FLAME University in India. Her research centers on the history and ethnography of architecture and construction in South Asia (19th-20th Century). Her current research project mobilizes historical building site photographs in participatory history-making events. Her work in the Indian city of Pune highlights the contributions of ‘forgotten' city builders such as labourers, Indian engineers in the British colonial service, and architects engaged by speculative developers.
After training as an architectural engineer at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and as an urban designer at the Architectural Association in London, Sarah Melsens obtained a PhD in Architecture from the University of Antwerp in 2020. She is an honorary research associate at the University’s Henry van de Velde Research Group. In India, she has taught several courses at architecture colleges, including, most recently, a research studio at CEPT University in Ahmedabad.
Sarah Melsens is the Assistant Editor of ABE Journal - Architecture Beyond Europe and a member of the editorial committee of Construction History, International Journal of The Construction History Society. She is a founding member of the Pune Architectural History Archive (PAHA), together with Prof. Maya Dodd, and of the scholarly platform PATIO - Platform for Architectural Transfers in the Indian Ocean rim.
Notable Publications:
- Melsens Sarah, Agarez Ricardo Costa, Lagae Johan, Sengupta Tania, “Editorial”, ABE journal : European architecture beyond Europe - ISSN 2275-6639 - Paris, Invisu-cnrs-inha, inst nat histoire art, 21(2023), p. 1-3 Full text (DOI uitgever): https://doi.org/10.4000/ABE.14408
- Bertels Inge, Bill Nicolas, Chrimes Mike, Melsens Sarah, Pan Yting, David Yeomans David, “Editorial”, Construction history : international journal of the Construction History Society / Construction History Society [Cambridge] - ISSN 0267-7768 - 38:2(2023), p. i-iv
- Melsens, Sarah, Inge Bertels, and Amit Srivastava. "Intermingled Interests: Social Housing, Speculative Building, and Architectural Practice in 1970s and 1980s Pune (India)." ABE Journal. Architecture beyond Europe, 20 (2022).
- Melsens Sarah, Chetan Sahasrabudhe, 2022, “TECHNICAL WRITINGS AS POLITICAL: BUILDING MANUALS AND PATTERN BOOKS FROM BRITISH INDIA (1880-1947)”, Timber and construction : the proceedings of the ninth conference of the Construction History Society (CHS), 1-3 April, 2022, Cambridge, UK- (Cambridge: CHS), p. 343-357.
- Melsens Sarah, Bertels Inge, Srivastava Amit, "The architectural production of India’s everyday modernism : middle-class housing in Pune, 1960-1980”, ABE journal : European architecture beyond Europe - ISSN 2275-6639 - 16(2019), p. 1-29, Full text (DOI uitgever): https://doi.org/10.4000/ABE.7011
- Melsens, S, Bertels, I & Srivastava A, 2019, INDIA’S ARCHITECTS ACT, 1972. THE TRIUMPH OF IDENTITY WORK?, in Water, Doors and Buildings : Studies in the History of Construction: the Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the Construction History Society, 5-7 April 2019, Cambridge, U.K., Campbell, James W.P. [edit.]- (Cambridge: CHS) p. 577-590.
- Melsens Sarah, Bertels Inge, Mangaonkar-Vaiude Priyanka, "The emergence and impact of vocational training in the building trades in Pune (India) : a case study of three insitutes”, Building Histories. The proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the Construction History Society, 7-9 April 2017, Cambridge, UK - ISBN 978-0-9928751-3-8 - Cambridge, Construction History Society, 2017, p. 27-39