Student profiles
Lokesh Ghai
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lokesh-ghai-6401b37/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ghailokesh
Email: creativelokesh@yahoo.com
Thesis Title
Institution
Supervisors
Professor Fiona Hackney
Dr Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
Deirdre Figueiredo MBE
Partner Organisation
Craftspace
Research Summary
The Dehradun Valley is a special context for the craft of shoemaking in India. Working in and for the valley community, shoemakers had a significant role in nation-building, handmaking footwear for Indian defence personnel, school children and people with special orthopaedic needs. While most shoe designs were introduced by the British during the colonial regime, shoes serving as a material metaphor of colonialisation, designs and models were also adapted to local styles and needs, representing the emergence of multiple negotiated identities. Shoemakers are currently under threat given the caste-based discrimination and fast fashion. One of the challenges for shoemakers is the absence of channels for wider consumers who value heritage and desire bespoke shoes.
This research will be the first in-depth, ethnographic study made in collaboration with heritage shoemakers in India. This data will then inform a practice-based project prototyping speculative shoes with a group of non-heteronormative ‘critical consumers’ in India and/or the Indian diaspora in the West Midlands, UK, to explore how heritage knowledge can be used to negotiate subject positions through dress, appearance, and sexual identity.
Research Interests
Heritage craft practice
Decolonising design
Shoes/ shoemaking & shoemakers
Caste & marginalisation
Queer studies & intersectionality
Apprenticeship
Cutting and stitching
Publications
https://garlandmag.com/perennial/lokesh-ghai/
L. Ghai, “Lessons of Design Empowerment”, in The Routledge Handbook of Craft and Sustainability in India, R. Reubens and T. Kachru, Eds., Taylor & Francis, 2024
L. Ghai, “Making of Kediyun: A Conscious Approach to Cloth”, in Reading the Thread: Cloth and Communication, M. Lesley, and A. Kettle, eds. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024.