Directors
Joyoti Roy
Joyoti is one of the founding members of Achi Association India. She has been working in the field of museums, conservation and culture for over seventeen years. She is a trained art conservator with a specialization in conservation of mural paintings. She has worked on various sites and projects of the Association and facilitated several collaborations of the association with governmental and non-governmental organizations. She also heads Strategy and Marketing at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) in Mumbai. She is interested in the social and civic role of cultural organizations and believes that arts institutions have the key responsibility to shape and reflect people's futures. Until 2017 she was heading the Outreach Department at the National Museum, Ministry of Culture, Government of India and has worked for both government and non-government institutions in India. Joyoti has been a Charles Wallace India Trust Awardee for the year 2008 for a fellowship programme in conservation of contemporary art at the Tate Gallery, London. She was the Clore Leadership Fellow for Culture representing India to the UK in 2017–18 and worked with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London for their upcoming museum and collection research facility in East London. She has coordinated several national and international exhibitions on art.
Abeer Gupta
Abeer Gupta joined the Achi Association as Director in 2014. His research is based in the western Himalayas, in Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir, around oral histories, material cultures, and visual archives focuisng on ideas of cultural construction, hybridity and commodification. His publications include, The Visual and Material Culture of Islam in Ladakh, in Visual Pilgrim, Mapping Popular Visuality and Devotional Media at Sufi Shrines and Other Islamic Institutions in South Asia, (2014), Discovering the Self and Others in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh in Sarit K Chaudhuri & Sucheta Sen Chaudhuri, eds, Fieldwork in South Asia - Memories, Moments, and Experiences, (Sage, 2014), and A Sense of Place—Islam in the Western Himalaya, in The Draw of the Hills, Latika Gupta, ed (Marg: Volume 69 Number 4, 2018).
Abeer Gupta is an alumnus of the National Institute of Design, India and Goldsmiths College, University of London and taught full-time at Ambedkar University Delhi between 2014-18. He has directed several documentary films and curated art, education and community media projects. He has participated in several group shows, such as Project Cinema Cinema City (2012), Fibre Fables (New Delhi, 2015) and Witness to Paradise, (Singapore Biennale 2016) and curated, Atoot dor: Unbroken Thread: The Banarasi Brocade Sari at Home and in the World (National Museum, New Delhi 2016), and Old Routes, New Journeys II (Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya, Bhopal 2017).
Collaborators
Architects
John Harrison
John Harrison is a British historic buildings architect who has been working for some thirty years in the Himalaya on research, documentation and building conservation
Edoardo Ferrari
Edoardo Ferrari is an architect from Italy who specializes on conservation of mud buildings. he has been working with AAI since 2016.
Wolfgang Heusgen
Wolfgang Heusgen was the most senior architect with ACHI. he was a professor at the University of Graz, Vienna and led the conservation project of the Wanla temple for several years. he hasd a specialization in working with traditional Ladakhi buildings.
Ernesto Noriega
Ernesto Noriega is South American sociologist and has worked with AAI in its early days supporting the training and awareness building of local monks and nuns in the Youth Training Program. he is an architect by profession.
Hilde Vets
Architect Hilde Vets studied at the HAI St. Lucas Ghent, Belgium.
Interested in architectural anthropology and vernacular (earthen) architecture, she since 2003 she has been working on restoration projects in Ladakh for the Achi Association (India).
During all these years, she always kept designing either as freelance collaborator with several architectural offices or as independent architect.
Field Architects
Field Architects was formed by Faiza Khan and Suril Patel in 2017. It aims to deconstruct the indigenous built forms, traditional artisanship, and formal geometry. While practicing contemporary vernacular architecture, they explore the adaptive potentials of local materials and aesthetics of the trans-Himalayas.
Their multidisciplinary team is made of masons, plasterers, structural carpenters, furniture makers, and architects.
Ramon Osorio
Deldan Angmo
Deldan is a senior Ladakhi conservation architect with over 20 years of field experience. She was one of the founding directors of AAI and has now moved to Australia. She does advice on several projects of AAI.
Gyurmet Tsewang
Gyurmet Tsewang is a Ladakhi architect who currently works with the AAI on several of its building conservation projects.
Roland Pabel
Wall Painting Conservators and Scientists
Alexandra
Skedzuhn-Safir
Alexandra Skedzuhn-Safir trained as an art conservator in Florence/Italy for works in stone and ceramics. Since 2012 she is a lecturer in architectural conservation at the BTU, and presently she is the acting professor at the Chair of Architectural Conservation.
Bjorn Buhler
Bjorn is an art conservator who has worked on several conservation campaigns of AAI, particularly in Nyoma, Skurbuchan and Kanji.
Janka Varhay
Motup Yangchan
Motup is a young Ladakhi conservator who has worked on some of the recent sites of AAI.
Phillip Schubert
Phillip is an art and wall painting conservator from Germany who worked on the early conservation projects -Kanji and Wanla.
Sonam Dolma (Nilza)
Sonam Dolma is a young Ladakhi wall painting conservator.
Angela Mitschke
Angela is a senior wall painting conservator and is currently Board member of the Achi Association, Zurich. She has led several campaigns in Ladakh.
Christine Blauer
Christine Bläuer is a conservation scientist who studied geology and mineralogy and wrote her PhD 1987 on the weathering of Bernese sandstone. She then expanded her professional horizons during the collaboration as a scientist in research projects on wall painting conservation in Germany, by teaching at several universities and colleges as well as through practical activities as a conservation scientist.
Katarina Kohler
Katarina is an Austrian Polychrome wood conservator who has worked on several projects and research initiatives of AAI.
Noor Jahan Chunka
Noor Jahan is a senior conservator who works with AAI and leads most of its wall painting campaigns. She also runs a conservation lab of her own in Ladakh and is pursuing a PhD in conservation from the National Museum institute, New Delhi.
Pranab Pratim Mohanty
Suzanne Bosch
Barbara Sadleczek
Barbara is a senior wall painting conservator who co-led the wall painting conservation campaigns at kanji and Wanla. she is one of the founding members of Achi Association, Zurich.
Heike Pfund
Heike is a senior art conservator with thirty-five years of work experience. She received her diploma in conservation and restoration from the University of Applied Sciences (FH) Cologne, and her M.A in World Heritage Studies at Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU) Cottbus. Heike has worked in heritage projects in Aserbaijan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Jemen, Jordan, Nepal, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates
Martina Oeter
Martina is one of the senior-mostwall painting conservators on the AAI team. She is one of the founding members of Achi Association, Zurich and set up and led all the early conservation campaigns of Achi-Kanji, Wanla and Skurbuchan.
Pankaj Sharma
Pankaj is an object conservator and has his own practice in New Delhi. he has often contributed to AAI campaigns.
Sandeep Kumar Bisht
Sandeep is an art conservator from New Delhi and has worked on several AAI conservation campaigns. He has a masters in Chemistry and has worked with leading conservation labs of the country.
Sven Trommer
Conservation and restoration work mainly in the field of wall paintings and stucco in Germany and abroad (Austria, Denmark, India). Major: Restoration and conservation of wall paintings. Minor: Mosaics, General restoration.
Project Coordinator
Jigmet Namgial
Jigmet Namgyal has been constantly working with the association as a manager since 2014 and earned his Bachelors of Arts from Punjab University, Chandigarh. Jigmet is known for his organizing skills and is actively associated with indigenous art and cultural upliftment since his graduation.
Archaeologist
Quentin Devers
Quentin Devers is a permanent researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS, Paris). He trained as an archaeologist at the University of Lyon 2, the University of Pennsylvania, and the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris). His PhD about the fortifications of Ladakh won a prize from the Chancellery of the Universities of Paris.
Art historian
Christian Luczanitz
Nils Martin
Nils Martin is a PhD Candidate in Art History and Tibetology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris) and a former Teaching Assistant in Indian Art at the École du Louvre (Paris). He has been doing extensive fieldwork in and around Ladakh since 2010, documenting the images of temples, caves, and gateway-stupas alike, as well as epigraphic material with a view to reassess the history of that region otherwise little known.
Project Associations
Diskit Angmo
Jigmat Norboo
Konchok Thinlas Kakapa
Rigzin Angmo
Swati
Swati is an artist. A painting post graduate from College of Art, Delhi, she has displayed her work in various group shows. She has worked at Kendriya Vidyalya, JNU Campus and also been art specialist for IB primary year at a private school in Noida. She has been associated with NGOs Uthaan and Kaksha.
Tundup Churpon
Gulzar Hussain
Komita Dhanda
Komita Dhanda is as an organizer, actor, director and writer with a Delhi based theatre group Jana Natya Manch (JANAM) since 2004. She is a research scholar in Theatre and Performance Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, J.N.U.
Nishant Upadhyay
Nishant Upadhyay is a conservation architect and founder architect of DHARATAL, a design firm specialized in vernacular architecture and landscape projects. Currently he is pursuing his doctoral degree at KULeuven in collaboration with INTACH Belgium Chapter. His research area is historical landscape conservation.
Ruchi Mathur
Tsering Motup Sukhman
Upamanyu Bhattacharya
Upamanyu Bhattacharya, a graduate from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, specializes in animation and illustration. He is currently part of several international animation projects and has been involved with Achi Association over the past three years developing and illustrating the education brochures around Rock Art, Fortifications, Vernacular Architecture and Wall Painting.
Haninder
Haninder is an art educator at a private school. He has taught CBSE, IB Diploma Programme and IGCSE for three and half years. He is also a freelance graphic designer and an illustrator. He is a postgraduatein Animation Film Design from the National Institute of Design and had completed BFA in Applied Arts from College of Art, New Delhi
Konchok Mothup
Chatpopa
Konchok Motup is an Achi office-assistant since 2013. He is a Monk from Drikung sect. With his vast knowledge in Local building material, monastic Art, Buddhistic Philosophy, he is an asset to Achi association. Motup acts as a supervisor- cum- Caretaker, of the Skyurbuchan Khar.
Nurzin Angmo
Stanzin Norboo Samba
Tsetan Angmo
Varun Manoharan