The goal of the seminar will be to broadly study informality and the actors and agents of informal practices with a focus on slums in the global south.  The course will equip students with an overview of the various social, political, and historical attributes that affect urban informality, focusing on an understanding of various strategies employed by actors and agents of informality. Students will examine how architectural agency is being deployed innovatively toward generating a new and progressive model of architectural practice.  In doing so, the course will also trace the broader history of policy and knowledge in the field – from slum clearance to slum intervention, upgradation and in situ slum ‘networking’.