Areas of interest: Heritage Walk Management, Urban Heritage Conservation, Community Engagement for Protection of Heritage
Debashish Nayak is an architect who has more than two decades of experience in managing urban conservation issues of Historic Cities in India and abroad. He is the Founder-Director, Centre for Heritage Management of Ahmedabad University. He has been advisor to the Heritage Programmes in the Municipal Corporations of various cities including Ahmedabad (since 1996), Jaipur, Amritsar, Old Delhi, Lucknow, Pondicherry etc, as well as to the Indian Heritage Cities Network launched by UNESCO, India. He was also the Gujarat State Project Co-ordinator for National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities, and member of the National Committee on Conservation Policy, Archaeological Survey of India.
In addition to Ashoka Fellowship (1990 – 1993), Salzburg Fellow (1990), Ten Outstanding Young Indian Award (1994) and in 1995, Friends of the United Nations Citizen’s Award at New York, and Anubhai Chimanlal–AMA Nagrikta Puraskar – citizenship award for his contribution in Ahmedabad. In 2015, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Governor of West Bengal. He has been recently awarded ‘The Spirit of Ahmedabad’ award by Chief Minister of Gujarat for his contribution in protection of city’s heritage.
