Stella Nair’s scholarship focuses on the built environment of indigenous communities in the Americas and is shaped by her interests in construction technology, spatial theory, material culture studies, landscape transformations, cross-cultural exchange, and hemispheric networks. Trained as an architect and architectural historian, Nair has conducted fieldwork in Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States, with ongoing projects in the South Central Andes.
Nair’s publications explore a range of subjects and regions such as colonial Andean paintings, Tiahuanaco lithic technology, the design of Inca royal estates, eighteenth century woven roofs, and Brazilian urbanism. She has published two books: the monograph, At Home with the Sapa Inca: Architecture, Space, and Legacy at Chinchero (University of Texas, 2015) examines the sophisticated ways in which the Inca manipulated space and architecture to impose their authority; and (with Jean-Pierre Protzen) The Stones of Tiahuanaco: A Study of Architecture and Construction (Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2013), which explores one of the world’s most artful and sophisticated carving traditions.
Nair has received research grants and fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, American Philosophical Association, National Gallery of Art, Dumbarton Oaks, Fulbright Institute, Getty Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and John Carter Brown Library.
Nair is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Core Faculty in American Indian Studies and the IDP in Archaeology. She also directs two Laboratories (Andean and Architecture) at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA.