IIHS (Institution Deemed to be) University

IIHS, the Sponsoring Body, is a Section 8 company under the Indian Companies Act, established in 2008 by eminent Indians who have distinguished themselves in various fields, including the government, private sector and civil society. They came together for a common cause, to set up a university, i.e., the IIHS (Institution Deemed to be) University.

Teaching and learning at the University are designed to address precisely these challenges through a transformation of urban education. In India, historically, urban education has been mistakenly reduced to just the spatial sciences of planning, architecture and design. Currently, India’s higher education system has no professional programme built around interdisciplinary skills (straddling engineering, architecture, urban design, planning, ecology, economics, politics, law, the arts and other social sciences) that can respond to the complexity of urbanisation.

The IIHS Research Programme locates itself within two simultaneous global transitions. Globally, cities are being recognised as being central to the agenda of transformation to an equitable, and sustainable world. At the same time, a knowledge transition is needed from the traditional models of disciplinary expertise to new, interdisciplinary ways of thinking that can address the developmental, innovation and technological opportunities of the 21st century—the rural-to-urban transition chief among them.