Dr. Elspeth Iralu, Architecture and Planning

Name:

Elspeth Iralu 

Title:

Assistant Professor

Department:

Architecture and Planning

Describe your research in about 200 words.

I study global Indigenous politics, Indigenous geographies, and violence and visual culture. My ongoing relationship to Native nations, working with, in, and for Indian Country, predates and provides the foundation for my scholarly and intellectual work in Indigenous planning. My work engages both my community of origin, the Indigenous territory Nagaland which is crosscut by India and Myanmar, and the communities in which I grew up and live today, rural and urban Native communities in the United States. Through my scholarly and community-based work, I seek to actively make connections between local expressions of Indigenous sovereignty and global processes of decolonization.

What’s the most interesting thing you have learned from a student?

Students learn when we teach with pedagogical methods based in love as well as with methods based in fear. But teaching with love enables students to bring the complexity of their lived experience into the classroom and make classroom learning meaningful.