Vasundhara Vaidya

Vasundhara Vaidya is a first-year B.Des student at BITS Design School, Mumbai. Design, as she understands it, is a practice built on questions about why things exist the way they do, who they serve, and what stories they carry, and on working closely with people to figure out what genuinely needs to change. Her interests span cultural research and visual communication, with a particular curiosity about how traditional knowledge remains alive and relevant in everyday contemporary contexts, and how grassroots-level interventions can shift things in ways that larger systems often cannot. Vasundhara and her team spent five months working with a local plant nursery, co-developing a business model through listening and iteration. She has also interned at Mind and Co., a mental health organization, and currently volunteers at an NGO working with local schools. She comes to Salzburg eager to explore who gets to author history, especially communities that have long communicated through craft, oral tradition, and material culture.