Sonal Mithal – Art and Heritage Director
Surat, India
Sonal Mithal Modi holds a Ph.D. in Landscape Architecture at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She received an undergraduate degree in architecture and a master’s degree in architectural conservation. Her work focuses on management strategies for historical landscapes, which prioritize design as an active medium to formalize international heritage policies. She is founder of conservation firm, People for Heritage Concern, which works on the management and design of heritage sites. As an academician she has taught design studios that focus on developing design methodologies for making visible the politics of heritage constitution all the while offering an enhanced user experience at historical urbanscapes. She has conducted cross-disciplinary workshops with performance and visual artists in India and US, to explore the significance of body as a medium to understand heritage landscapes. Currently, she is working on an artistic project of making palimpsestic paintings to critique the archival approach to history.
