Though trained as an architect and a researcher, Shaji defines himself primarily as a committed teacher and a continuing student of art and architecture. His scholastic training may be broadly categorized under the heading of architectural history and theory. Shaji’s research, initially, explored non-Western reactions to the International Style and Modernism through a rigorous reading of authors such as Habermas, Frederic Jameson, Kenneth Frampton, Manfredo Tafuri, Arjun Appadurai, and Foucault. In his Doctoral work Shaji provides an account of the manner in which history, context, agency and agents, come together at a point in time as a complex set of historically constituted social relations, to authorize and sustain particular viewpoints about – with respect to (but not confined to) his particular interest – contemporary Indian architecture.

Before joining the School of Design and Architecture at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Dubai, Shaji has taught at the prestigious College of Architecture, R.V. College of Engineering, in Bangalore, and briefly at the Department of Architectural Engineering, United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain, UAE.

Apart from teaching and writing academic papers, Shaji - a self-taught artist - occasionally exits into a relatively slow-paced and self-reflective realm of artistic exploration (paintings and sculpture) to explore/exploit, via different media (primarily, watercolor), his personal, philosophical, and poetic propositions.

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