Rate My Professor Manu Sobti

A landscape historian and urban interlocutor of the Global South, Sobti's research specializations encompass South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, with a focus on borderland transgressions intertwined with human mobilities, indigeneities, and narratives of passage across liminal sites. His approach emphasizes land-centered, deep place histories as de-colonizing processes challenging top-down narratives of borders and nation states. Sobti's scholarship has received support from numerous funding bodies, including the Graham Foundation, Architectural Association, Fulbright Foundation, Aga Khan Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and others, along with seven research fellowships at institutions worldwide. He is a nominated Expert Member of the ICOMOS-ICIP International Committee on the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites. Key publications include his book Urban Form & Space in the Islamic City: A Study of Morphology & Formal Structures in the City of Bhopal (Central India) (1993); edited volume Chandigarh Re-think: Transforming Ruralities and Edge(ness) in Global Urbanities (2017); and chapters such as "Beyond Water: Step Wells and Community Hydraulics in Modern India" (2024), "Re-imagining Eurasia: Past Flatland Stories of Urban and Landscape Heritage" (2020), "Eurasia’s Historical Space of Palimpsest—Desert, Border, Riparian and Steppe" (2019), "Persian Civitas: Revised Readings on Networked Urbanities and Suburban Hinterlands" (2016), and "Mobile Urbanism: Tent Cities in Medieval European Travel Writings" (2015).