Faculty

Dr. George Michell is one of the world's most foremost authorities on the art and architecture of South Asia. Trained as an architect at the University of Melbourne, he subsequently pursued advanced study at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, receiving his doctorate in 1974 for a dissertation on Early Chalukya temple architecture.

Michell has devoted more than five decades to the study, documentation, and interpretation of India's sacred monuments. From 1981 and for over twenty years, he co-directed the Hampi Vijayanagara Research Project alongside the American archaeologist Dr. John M. Fritz: a comprehensive architectural and archaeological survey of the Vijayanagara capital, supported in part by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. He is a co-founder of the Deccan Heritage Foundation and has produced more than a dozen guidebooks to Deccan sites. He currently oversees the completion of the Vijayanagara Archaeological Atlas, documenting some 25 square kilometers of the historical site.

Among his most recent publications are Temples of Deccan India (Woodbridge, 2023), Islamic Architecture of Deccan India (with Helen Philon, 2018), and City of Victory, Hampi Vijayanagara (with John M. Fritz, Mumbai, 2025). He divides his year between London, Goa, and Melbourne.

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