After studying English, Greek, and Latin Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles, Allan Kram finished his Masters in Architecture at Columbia University in New York City in 2003.  He has been working as a designer at an architecture and land planning firm in Santa Monica, California, where he has explored the impact of land use and development on public spaces. During his undergraduate studies, he served as Senior Editor of Westwind, UCLA’s Journal for the Arts.  He continues to write occasionally on art and architecture.

Delhi-based practising architect, Gautam Bhatia, graduated in Fine Arts and went on to get a Masters degree in Architecture. He has received several awards for his buildings and has written extensively on the subject. Besides a biography of Laurie Baker (1991), he is the author of Punjabi Baroque (1994), Silent Spaces (1995), and Malaria Dreams (1996) – a trilogy that focuses on the cultural and social aspects of architecture. His Whitewash: The Tabloid that Is, About the India that Isn’t was published recently.  Bhatia is currently working on Below the Horizon – A City Neighbourhood Underground, a project sponsored by a consortium of building agencies.

Arshiya Lokhandwala was the founder and curator of Lakeeren Art Gallery, Mumbai, from 1995 to 2002. In 2001, she was awarded the Charles Wallace India Trust Award, towards an M.A. in Creative Curating, at Goldsmiths College, London. She was also selected as one of the participants at the Documenta 11 Education programme in Kassel, Germany, in 2002.

She curated Rites/ Rights/Rewrites: Women’s Video Art, which travelled to Cornell, Duke, and Rutgers Universities from 2003 to 2006. In 2006, she curated a performance by Monali Meher, Between the Familiar/Unfamiliar,The Home and Heart, Beats a Golden Kiss, at the Tate Modern, London. Lokhandwala is currently an independent curator and art historian and is pursuing her PhD at Cornell University, USA.

Kaiwan Mehta has studied architecture, literature, and Indian Aesthetics, and has a keen interest in urban studies. He is currently a research fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany. He is a senior lecturer at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture (KRVIA), Bombay, and is the Assistant Editor of Indian Architect and Builder, and former Consulting Editor of Architecture – Time, Space and People, the official journal of the Council of Architecture, India. He has received research fellowships from the KRVIA, the CSCS, Bangalore, and SARAI, New Delhi, and has been associated with the ‘Bombay before the British’ project of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He has actively participated in several academic and research programmes and has a number of published articles and papers to his credit.

Matias Echanove is an urbanologist active in Tokyo and Mumbai. Before moving to Japan to pursue his doctoral studies in Urban Information Systems at the University of Tokyo, he studied Economics and Politics at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Political Science and Urban Planning at Columbia University, New York. His interests include information technologies, architecture, design, the informal economy and informal settlements, street culture, and music. He co-authors a blog on these topics with Rahul Srivastava (www.airoots.org).

Kapil Gupta is an architect and urban designer based in Mumbai. He graduated with honours from Sir J.J. College of Architecture, Mumbai, and followed this up with post-graduate studies at the Architectural Association, London. He is the principal of Serie Architects and a Director at the Urban Design Research Institute, Mumbai. The works of Serie have been extensively published in design journals like A+U, Architectural Design, Wallpaper, ArchPlus, and Tatlin. Gupta has lectured widely. He was awarded the Architectural Record Design Vanguard Award 2005. He curated India’s entry for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2006.

Lee Johnson is a London-based writer and PR consultant to contemporary artists, curators, and film-makers.  Johnson began her career at Sotheby’s Auctioneers and was in charge of Special Projects, including a Yoko Ono exhibition and a Pet Shop Boys concert at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. After spending two years as Head of Press at the Timothy Taylor Gallery in London’s Mayfair, where she worked with artists like Bridget Riley and Sean Scully, Lee set up her own business. Lee is a regular contributor to Kultureflash and is a free-lance critic.