mila t samdub


researcher / writer / designer / curator

milasamdub@gmail.com


currently: visiting fellow, information society project, yale law school; fellow, cyberbrics project, cts-fgv rio; fellow, open future

2020-2022: master of environmental design, yale school of architecture (thesis: maximum governance: managerial populism and violent infrastructures in modi's india)

2017-2018: curator, khoj international artists' association, new delhi (curated: art-science-fiction, this must be true, etc)


a few things I've written:


on tech

what would it take for digital public infrastructures to actually serve the public?, the wire, 2025

"digital public infrastructure" at a turning point: from definitions to motivations, open future foundation, 2025

what is digital public infrastructure? towards more specificity (co-authored with chand rajendra-nicolucci) tech policy press, 2024

promises and pitfalls of india's AI industrial policy, (co-authored with jyoti panday), AI nationalism(s): global industrial policy approaches to AI, AI now, 2024

the bangalore ideology, the caravan, 2023

governance interface: the index in modi's india, public culture, 2022

the archers and swordsmen of digital india: trolling as infrastructural performance, in improvised futures: encountering the body in performance edited by ranjana dave, tulika books, 2021

home cooking, real life magazine, 2018


on architecture in india

technocracy and hindutva: the architecture of governance in the new india, e-flux architecture, 2024

but does their form have an essence: on actually existing modernism, chiragh delhi, 2019

how to do things with modernist architecture, art india, 2018

troubled destinies: heritage in the time of hindutva, indian cultural forum, 2017


on tibet

oral traditions, in the penguin book of modern tibetan essays edited by tenzin dickie, penguin india, 2023

impossible but existent: tibet after the nation-state, himal southasian, 2020


a photograph of a roadside highway support taken by me beside the ring road in new delhi. the column is spraypainted with green text that reads 'do not remove this column without me'. what does it mean to be attached to infrastructure?