Beyond Preservation:
Temple Architecture as a Living Hindu Knowledge System
Recent Webinar: Saturday, January 24, 2026, 9:00 am PT / 12:00 pm ET / 10:30 pm IST
About the Webinar:
India’s built heritage is more than monuments and historic structures; it represents a living continuum of knowledge, ritual practice, cultural memory, and civilizational continuity. In this special webinar, we are pleased to introduce Dr. Ujjwala Khot-Palsuley, conservation architect, architectural historian, and founder of Samrachanā – Heritage Research Studio.
Drawing on her doctoral research on Indian temple architecture and its transmission to Southeast Asia, along with her extensive on-the-ground research-based conservation practice in India, Dr Khot-Palsuley will reflect on how architectural conservation must move beyond restoration and material preservation. She will propose a civilizational approach that understands temples and historic structures as living knowledge systems shaped by cosmology, sacred geography, ritual continuity, traditional craftsmanship, and community life.
Through selected examples from temple cities, sacred landscapes, and heritage sites in India and Southeast Asia, the lecture will explore how indigenous architectural knowledge travelled beyond the Indian subcontinent while retaining its Hindu philosophical foundations. The session will also introduce Samrachanā as a practice rooted in traditional knowledge systems and interdisciplinary inquiry, offering culturally grounded approaches to understanding of heritage.
This webinar serves as an intellectual introduction to Dr. Khot-Palsuley’s work and opens pathways for deeper engagement with Hindu architecture as a transregional civilizational phenomenon. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Hindu Studies, architecture, history, Indology, heritage conservation, and all those seeking a deeper understanding of India’s living cultural and civilizational legacy.Get to Know panelist
Dr. Ujjwala Khot-Palsuley
Dr. Ujjwala Khot-Palsuley is a conservation architect, architectural historian, researcher, and author whose work focuses on Indian temple architecture and its civilisational spread across Southeast Asia, particularly Cambodia. She holds a PhD in Architecture and an M.Arch in Architectural Conservation from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, and is also trained in Indology.
She is the Founder of Samrchanā – Heritage Research Studio, and Honorary Director of the Indian Heritage Awareness and Research (IHAR), Maharashtra Chapter. Dr. Khot’s doctoral research and subsequent scholarship examine the philosophical, spatial, and ritual continuities between Indian and Khmer temple traditions.Her internationally recognised book Cambodia: India Outside India – Decoding Khmer Architecture is catalogued in the US Library of Congress.
A recipient of multiple national awards, she has curated international conferences, exhibitions, and site seminars in India and Cambodia. She regularly delivers keynote lectures and conducts immersive courses on temple cities, cultural landscapes, and Indic knowledge systems. Her mission is to generate wider public awareness of temples in India and to cultivate an Indic perspective for understanding temples as living systems of knowledge, culture, and spiritual thought.
Her work seeks to re-centre temples as living knowledge systems- integrating architecture, cosmology, ritual,
and cultural memory- beyond colonial and purely stylistic interpretations.
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