Shundana Yusaf

GRANTS AND DIGITAL ARCHIVING SPECIALIST, CO-FOUNDER

Projects: Walking With Dinétah, The Sweat Equity Homes Project, Microgrid Kayenta, A Resilient Broadband Solution for Kayenta Chapter of the Navajo Nation

Shundana grew up in Pakistan, where she spent her childhood between the city and her ancestral village and trained as an architect. Having engaged in both private and public practice, she realized early on that her professional education gave her no skills, tools, or language to serve rural communities. She felt that the philosophical, technical, and design challenges of building schools in remote rural societies raised very difficult questions about the Eurocentric paradigm of professional practice and the limits of architecture as an instrument of empowerment. Twenty three years on, her scholarship, creative work, teaching, and service are still grappling with these foundational questions.

Shundana is an Associate Professor of Architectural History at the School of Architecture at the University of Utah. It was her work on the digital humanities project Archipedia:Utah that first brought her to beautiful and resilient Dinétah and since then, there has been no looking back. As a postcolonial scholar and educator, Shundana has written extensively on the history and theory of architecture and landscape intelligence of oral societies in the Colorado Plateau. It is her solidarity with postcolonial people and her commitment to their collective cultural resilience that drives her dedication to Nááts'íilid Initiative, where she contributes as a grant writer, planner, researcher, and community organizer. Shundana sees her work with Nááts'íilid Initiative as a vehicle for exploring how architecture can serve as an instrument of civic enterprise and activism. She hopes that she can take what she learns to teach her students Indigenous ways, past and present involving human and non-human actants in building rituals and creative practice. When not advancing postcolonial approaches to community engagement, Shundana loves growing food, making healthy meals, feeding friends, stitching, throwing pots, and weaving.

shundana@arch.utah.edu | LinkedIn