Vyjayanthi V. Rao

Ph.D. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology (University of Chicago)
Adjunct Associate Professor, Spitzer School of Architecture
Visiting Professor, Yale University School of Architecture
Managing Editor, Public Culture (Duke University Press)
Curator, “Multiplicity,” Lisbon Architecture Triennale, 2022

VYJAYANTHI V. RAO is an anthropologist, writer and curator. An ethnographer of urban life in India and elsewhere, she also writes regularly about art and the role of creativity in urban life. Her work explores speculation, design and architecture and her practice combines ethnographic fieldwork with mapping, film-making and other forms of visual research.

She is the author of numerous essays and is the co-editor of two books
▶ 2015, “Speculation Now: Essays and Artworks”. Durham, Duke University Press.
▶ 2016, “Occupy All Streets: Olympic Urbanism and Contested Futures in Rio de Janeiro”. UR Books.

VYJAYANTHI is a senior contributing editor of the journal Public Culture and a member of the artist collective Samooha, exploring creative practices of autonomous urbanism. She teaches urban anthropology at the Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York and is currently a Visiting Professor at Yale School of Architecture. She is co-curator of the exhibition Multiplicity, as part of the Lisbon Triennale of Architecture, 2022.