Richa Shah is an architect and assistant professor at the School of Environment and Architecture (SEA) in Mumbai, India. She graduated from Pune University in 2020 and later pursued a Master's in Architectural History and Research from CEPT University, Ahmedabad (2024). Her main field of inquiry lies within both past and contemporary archives, where she explores the colonial and post-colonial histories of India and South Asia. Her master's thesis, "Living Megalithic Traditions of Jharkhand: ‘Sasandiri’ as an Identity of the Munda Community," examined the spatiality of funerary practices of Jharkhand's indigenous tribes by utilising diverse research methods, including archival study, oral histories, and community engagement.
Currently, she is involved in two major archival projects: building a ‘South Asian Architecture and Urbanism’ archive at SEA alongside Rupali Gupte, and the digital publication of archival photographs under the ‘OMHI (Omitted from History)’ project with Dr. Sarah Melsens. Her research project "Road to Modernisation" is a spin-off of the OMHI Project, in which she investigates the operations of the Public Works Department (PWD) in the 20th century to trace how various road construction experiments ultimately became established standards and specifications.