Continuing the conversation on mapping the past two decades of her career, Madhavi Desai notes how they couldn’t be business-minded while designing for clients in Ahmedabad. Soon after, she also applied for a fellowship at the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) for her research on Bora houses in Gujarat. Based on that, she moved on to taking up an Aga Khan Fellowship. She further talks about the long journey of publishing her book, which eventually came out in 2017.  Regarding studying colonial and modern architecture, she fondly recalls the fieldwork involved in her study which was turned into a book. 

In regards to her experiences of engaging with feminist causes, she recalls how she participated in organizing an exhibition and meeting with women architects in Ahmedabad which led to establishing the collective Women Architects Forum and its purpose and evolution.  They held a Symposium on Gender and the Built Environment at ATMA Ahmedabad, the learnings of which were assimilated into a book published by Zubaan. She also talks about another book project she is currently working on, called Gender and the Indian City: Revisioning Design and Planning, which got stalled in the pandemic.  There are few funding opportunities available for architectural research and this imposed several bottlenecks on her study. She talks about the process of interviewing as part of her research, the questions in focus, and the learnings that come out of it. 

Her first book, Architecture and Independence: The Search for Identity: India 1880 to 1980, which she co-authored, and her book on the bungalow in twentieth century India were very well received abroad while her book on Bohra houses was well received by students in India. Moreover, her book on women architects was also internationally well-received. She dwells on the concept and research involved in some of these works, which was driven by her interest in colonial architecture. She also talks about the challenges that the pandemic posed to her research. While addressing the conceptualization of the Feminist Collective forum and the Gender and Academic Leadership project, she talks about the story behind them both and their evolution. Concluding with a description of the purpose and afterlife of the collective, she talks about her aspirations for their future.