- sena@uwm.edu
- 414-977-7655
- Holton Hall 326
- https://linktr.ee/fieldschool
- CV
Arijit Sen
- Associate Professor, History
- Affiliated Assoc. Professor, Urban Studies
Education
- PhD, University of California, Berkeley. 2002
- M Arch, Iowa State University, Ames. 1991
- B Arch, University of Bombay, Bombay. 1987
Office Hours
Courses Taught
- HIST 715 - Research Methods in Local History
- URBSTD 728 - Urban Community Workshop
- HIST 404/G - Food as Historical Artifact
- HIST 701 - Graduate Internship in Public History
- Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Field School
Teaching Interests
- Urban and architectural history
- Housing and food justice (US)
- Material Culture
- Public history
- Environmental justice
- American cultural landscapes
- Community-engaged fieldwork
- Collaborative ethnography
Research Interests
- Public history and public humanities fieldwork
- Urban history and architectural history
- Material culture
- Collaborative ethnography
- American cultural landscapes
- Historic Preservation
- Immigration and diaspora studies
Related Activities
Founding Co-Director, Community Powered, Wisconsin Humanities
Lead, Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Field School and the Milwaukee Environmental Justice Lab
Partner, Climates of Inequality, Humanities Action Lab
Selected Grants/Awards
2026 Robert Kelley Memorial Award, National Council on Public History, Awarded to Humanities Action Lab, Hunter College and its affiliates including Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Field School, UWM, September 16-19, 2026, NCPH Annual Meeting, Providence, RI.
Consultant, Mead & Hunt, National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Project 25-67. Emily Pettis, Principal Investigator, Mead & Hunt, Inc., Middleton, Wisconsin, 2024-2026
Academic PI, Community Powered Tribal Health Initiative (CPTHI), 2025 Community Impact Grant, UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP).
Founding co-director, 2024 National Swartz Prize, Federations of State Humanities Councils, Community Powered Project, Wisconsin Humanities.
2020-2025, Research Consultant, The Shifting Landscapes: Slavery and the Built Environment Virtual Tour Project, Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses, National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ Museums for America grant. https://hgghh.org/gallier-virtual-tour.
Fellow, Society of Architectural Historians, 2022
Imagining America’s LLI Stories of Change Case Study Project, A three-year action research project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Imagining America, ‘21-22.
Douglas Gillmor Theory Seminar and Lectureship, Urban Field School, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, University of Calgary, March 2021.
Mellon Fellowships in Urban Landscape Studies, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C., Spring 2021.
12th Annual UWM Regent’s Diversity Award, University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, Recognizing individuals and programs that foster access and success for students who are members of historically underrepresented populations, 2020.
2015-2016 UWM Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year, Office of Undergraduate Research, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, May 2016.
2015-2016 UWM Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, October 2016.
American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) 2013 Award of Merit. BLC Field School, 2012
2010 Fromkin Research Grant and Lectureship on American Social Justice, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, 2010-2011.
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Arijit Sen is a historian of everyday places and ordinary people. He examines the cultural landscapes of immigrant communities and interprets cities from the bottom up by engaging the voices and histories of urban communities traditionally ignored in official narratives. In 2022 he was inducted as a Fellow in the Society of Architectural Historians.
Sen has directed public history and preservation fieldwork projects in Milwaukee, Chicago, Calgary, and New Orleans. Since 2012 he has directed the Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures field school, a public humanities project that engages students, scholars, and community members in a collaborative exploration and documentation of the history and heritage of Milwaukee’s neighborhoods. The field school is currently partnering with the Newark-based Humanities Action Lab to contribute to “Climates of Inequality," a traveling exhibit on environmental justice.
Sen has served as a co-director for the 2022-23 pilot year of Community Powered project, a state-wide Public Humanities initiative of Wisconsin Humanities. He has previously served on the board of directors of the Society of Architectural Historians and the Vernacular Architecture Forum, as a contributor to the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture’s Knowledge Construction Workshop, and as a fellow at the Center for 21st Century Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Center for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota, and the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Harvard University.
Sen has published in journals such as the Winterthur Portfolio, Food & Foodways, South Asian History and Culture, Buildings & Landscapes, and the Journal of Society of Architectural Historians; he has coedited Landscapes of Mobility: Culture, Politics and Placemaking (Ashgate Publishers, UK, 2013 with Jennifer Johung) and Making Place: Space and Embodiment in the City (Indiana University Press, 2014 with Lisa Silverman).