Rate My Professor Mallika Bose

Mallika Bose is a Professor of Landscape Architecture within Architecture and Design at Penn State University’s College of Arts and Architecture. She earned a B.Arch. from Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India; an M.B.E.M. from the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi, India; an M.Arch. in Architecture with a specialization in environment-behavior studies from Kansas State University; and a Ph.D. in Architecture, also specializing in environment-behavior studies, from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where her dissertation analyzed women’s work and spaces in the slums of Calcutta, India. An architect and urban planner by training, Bose began her academic career as an Instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, followed by a Post-doctoral Scholar position and Research Associate role at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She served as Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at Ball State University before joining Penn State in 2002 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, promoted to Associate Professor in 2008 and Professor in 2019. Her administrative appointments include Director of the Hamer Center for Community Design from 2008 to 2012, Professor in Charge of Graduate Programs from 2014 to 2017, Interim Director of the Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture from 2022 to 2023, and current Associate Dean for Research, Creative Activity, and Graduate Studies since 2019.

Bose’s research explores community-engaged design and planning, built environment influences on active living and healthy eating, public scholarship and community-based design, gender and development, design and planning pedagogy, urban and non-traditional housing, and socio-cultural impacts on the built environment. Her publications feature in leading journals including Landscape Research, Urban Studies, Habitat International, Journal of Urban Design, Landscape Journal, and Journal of Environmental Psychology. Key works include the co-edited book Community Matters: Service-learning in Engaged Design and Planning; “Who owns the city? Neoliberal urbanism and land purchases in Gurgaon, India” (Urban Studies, 2024); “Landscape architecture as democratic practice: learning from participatory methods and motivations in community-engaged design” (Landscape Research, 2025); “Power through social networks: A case study of urban farmers facing land development in Delhi, India” (Habitat International, 2022); and “Women’s home-centred work in India: The gendered politics of space” (International Development Planning Review, 2007). Bose has earned the 2019-20 Big Ten Academic Alliance Academic Leadership Program Fellowship, 2017-18 Faculty Administrative Fellowship at Penn State, 2012-13 Social Science Research Institute Faculty Fellowship, 2008-09 Public Scholarship Associate award, and 2007 Rock Ethics Institute Faculty Fellowship, among others. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Environmental Design Research Association, which she chaired from 2012 to 2013.