Gauri Bharat works in the field of architectural history, focusing on the everyday experiences and material practices of communities in India. Her work examines how built environments are shaped by social, cultural, and economic contexts, particularly among indigenous and vernacular settings. Her research on spatial practices among the Santal community in eastern India formed the basis of her doctoral work and was published as In Forest, Field, and Factory: Adivasi Habitations Through Twentieth-Century India (SAGE-Yoda Press, 2019).

Her ongoing work centers on two areas. The first is lived histories, which look at how people’s lives are linked to the built environments they inhabit. She is currently developing three studies on neighbourhoods and streets in Ahmedabad as socio-spatial formations. The second area is histories of making, focusing on construction practices and material use. This includes a project on the history of reinforced concrete in the Indian subcontinent, supported by a Graham Foundation grant in 2019. She has also initiated research on the built environments of nomadic pastoralist groups. Alongside her research, she teaches and leads academic programmes and is currently Dean of the School of Architecture at Anant National University in Ahmedabad, India.