Assistant Professor
Department of Urban and Regional Planning
Ashima Krishna is an architect, historic preservation planner and educator. Her research focuses on three broad areas related to cultural heritage and its preservation: the management of historic urban landscapes in developing countries like India, issues in adaptively reusing religious historic structures and landscapes, and contemporary problems with world heritage sites in the developing world.
Over the years, she has worked on various projects dealing with architectural and landscape design, architectural and urban conservation, interior design, urban development, and adaptive reuse. Her principal interests remain in the preservation and conservation of built heritage and how they interface with issues of management and local governance, and especially how the management of heritage affects the way in which planners and architects shape the built
environment.
She received her Bachelor of Architecture from the School of Planning and Architecture (New Delhi, India) in 2005. In 2006, she joined the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University, earning a Master of Arts in Historic Preservation Planning in 2009, and a Ph.D. in International Planning with a focus on Historic Preservation Planning in January 2014. She was awarded a research fellowship from the Clarence S. Stein Institute for Urban and Landscape Studies during the course of her doctoral work, allowing her to conduct fieldwork in India between 2011 and 2012. In 2011 she also received the Global Heritage Fund Preservation Fellowship to study the impact of India’s federally funded initiatives through the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) on historic sites in Agra, India.
