Workshop on Writing Place: Narrative, Landscape, and Mediation in Lavasa

The Department of English and Cultural Studies organized a workshop titled “Writing Place: Narrative, Landscape, and Mediation in Lavasa” on 28 January 2026. The programme explored place-based narrative writing through a combination of literary practice, critical reading, and the responsible use of artificial intelligence tools. Designed primarily for students of English, Cultural Studies, and Digital Humanities, the workshop approached Lavasa not as a neutral backdrop but as a constructed, mediated, and contested space shaped by social, ecological, and infrastructural forces.

The session was led by Dr Pallavi Narayan, an accomplished author, editor, and educator with more than sixteen years of experience in trade and academic publishing. Dr Narayan’s professional engagements include collaborations with Routledge, Pan Macmillan, Penguin Random House, NUS Press, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, and Singapore Management University, among others. She has previously served as Associate Professor of Literary Studies at O.P. Jindal Global University and as Director of the Creative Writing Programme at Ahmedabad University. Her extensive work with writers and editors brought valuable industry and academic perspectives to the workshop.

The workshop encouraged participants to examine Lavasa through the intersecting lenses of landscape, literature, and infrastructure. Students were introduced to selected literary and nonfiction readings that demonstrated how attention to material environments, ecological histories, and everyday lived experience shapes narrative voice and ethical positioning. These texts functioned as models for understanding how place is narrated, imagined, and politicized in contemporary writing.

A significant component of the programme involved guided field-writing exercises. Participants were invited to observe Lavasa’s designed environments, architectural aesthetics, ecological traces, and moments of absence or incompletion. Through close attention to sensory detail, students produced short narratives that sought to capture the complexities of the town beyond its promotional image. The exercises emphasized specificity, observation, and reflexivity, encouraging writers to recognize their own positionality in relation to the place they described.

An innovative aspect of the workshop was its critical engagement with artificial intelligence tools. Rather than treating AI as a creative substitute, the session introduced language models as analytical readers capable of highlighting patterns, assumptions, and generic expressions within student drafts. Participants experimented with basic text-analysis features to reflect on tone, cliché, and narrative structure. This approach foregrounded revision as an intellectual process and demonstrated how dominant narratives about development and progress circulate through digital systems. Clear ethical guidelines ensured that AI remained a supportive instrument without displacing human authorship or creativity.

By integrating literary study, situated writing practice, and reflective digital methods, the workshop offered a distinctive Digital Humanities framework for understanding place. It encouraged students to rethink Lavasa as a layered site of memory, aspiration, and contradiction, while also developing practical skills in narrative composition and critical AI literacy. The interactive format fostered dialogue between theory and practice, enabling participants to translate observation into thoughtful storytelling.

The event was well received by students and faculty alike, who appreciated its interdisciplinary orientation and emphasis on ethical creativity. The Department envisions similar initiatives in the future that combine field engagement, critical reflection, and emerging technologies to enrich the study of culture and narrative.