Research

My research interests lie at the intersections of urban governance, water-sanitation infrastructure planning, climate adaptation planning, migrant inclusion and justice, and urbanization outside metropolitan geographies. I am pursuing two active lines of research. The first focuses on planning for water security in the context of rapid urbanization and climate change, critically examining the governance and technological transformations it entails to ask how these ‘innovations’ and ‘improvisations’ address entrenched social and environmental inequalities to realize just futures. The second line examines how migrant workers are included in plans and policies for infrastructure development across Indian city regions, analyzing how their inclusion addresses entrenched social, economic, and environmental injustices as well as workers’ demands for urban citizenship. Uniting these two lines of research is a commitment to interrogating planning approaches that attend to social reproduction needs in the city and advance social justice.

My work has been published in leading academic journals in my field like Urban Studies, Planning Theory & Practice, Climate & Development, Habitat International and in public media like Progressive City, The Conversation, and Scroll.In. To access a full list of publications, click here.

Environmental justice and just adaptation through the work(ing) of green stormwater infrastructure (funded by SSHRC, Canada)
Moving up or down? Increasing vulnerabilities in the face of opportunity for migrant workers in small cities (funded by the Connaught New Researcher Award at UofT)
Sustaining & scaling safe, continuous water supply across Odisha: Distilling and disseminating lessons from recent Drink from Tap successes (funded by the UofT India Foundation and Tata Trusts, with Prof. David Meyer in Civil Engineering at UofT as PI and Prof. Kajri Misra in XIM, Bhubaneswar as co-PI)
Understanding water quality to promote community uptake of rainwater harvesting technologies (funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund, with Prof. Amy Bilton in Mechanical Engineering at UofT as PI and Prof. Ron Hoffman in Civil Engineering at UofT as co-PI)