![Nihal Teaching a Class in Ahmedabad[1].png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56241519e4b055379f4a526e/1454989974005-X3D7GWOF0QKXBTNEQLUL/Nihal+Teaching+a+Class+in+Ahmedabad%5B1%5D.png)
teaching
As a must for inside-out (bottom-up) interventions, I value learning from ordinary people and communities.
To teach John, they say, the teacher must know the subject and, especially, John. The impact that an academic course has on analytical frameworks employed in the meaningful organization of information is more long-lasting than the skills and information acquired during an academic career. In Chinese, do not give them fish, but teach them how to fish.
At Ball State (1995-2012), he taught seminars on international development, qualitative methods, social justice, planning in multicultural societies, and distressed cities all of which he created. He exposed students to both global northern and southern vantage points and to interdisciplinary and multicultural approaches. He introduced a whole new area of international and multicultural studies that did not exist when he joined. At Hong Kong Baptist University, he taught cultural landscapes, subaltern and postcolonial studies, and Asian urbanism. At Yangon Technological University, he taught Asian urbanism and urbanity through the mapping of people's Yangon. In Germany and Italy, the focus was development. At University of Moratuwa, he taught urban political-economy, planning theory, and fieldwork. He also teaches in the area of urban form and design.
Besides, I am interested in the pedagogy of the free and how the illiterate learn from the world from inside (as opposed to learning the word as more of a label from outside). Hence I developed the CapAsia program (see below) and took students to the “other American cities” that don’t get addressed in the curriculum. Now I continue it in other places as well.
Educational Programs
CapAsia
1998-2012
My main contribution to education is represented in the unique field semester based in Asia which I founded in 1998 and directed until 2012. Although in Asia, it provides a guided experience of societies, cultures, and spaces through immersion facilitated by homestays. Its aim is to learn about communities and space, from the locals, by doing projects collaboratively with local students with the help of local educators and professionals. The key objective of CapAsia is participants’ reflective-learning about themselves, helping them become reflective thinkers and practitioners. Its multifaceted teaching and learning strategy has been recognized as transformative, life-changing, and, as a result, has received three Fulbright-Hays awards.
East Asia Summer Program
2006-09
Curricularized the 15-year old Far East Field Trip and executed as a short immersive-learning program in China in 2006. Repeated in 2009.
Director of Asian Studies
2003-06
පාඨමාලාව
Teaching Experience
University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, February, 2020
Anant National University, Ahmedabad, India, March, 2020
City School of Architecture, Colombo, 2019-20
Hunan University, Changsha, China, Fall, 2019
King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology at Ladkrabang (KMITL), Bangkok, Thailand, Spring/ Summer, 2017
Yangon Technological University, Myanmar, 2015-16
PAR Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany, 2011
Centre for Economic and International Studies (CEIS), University of Rome, Italy, 2011
CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India 2009-10
Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China, 2006-07
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, Summer 2007, 2011-14
Ball State University, Muncie, IN, USA, 1995-2012
Binghamton University (adjunct) (State University of New York), 1991-95
