Urban and Mobility Studies

The Programme has organised three popular outreach series of lectures and events: ‘City at its Limits’, ‘Public Feminisms’, and ‘Changing India’. Lectures, film screenings and workshops attracted large audiences and prompted spirited debate and discussion.  

To disseminate the findings of the Speculative Urbanism project, a multi-media exhibition entitled ‘Speculative Urbanism’ was put up at Rangoli, a public gallery in Bangalore, from July 27–August 8, 2019, and again at the Indian Institute of Human settlements from September 26 – October 5, 2019. The exhibit featured photography, material artefacts, video, and text from our project. It received strong media coverage and made the key themes of our research -- the operation of land markets, the entanglement of real estate and finance capital, the ecological impacts of real estate on the city, and livelihood impacts -- available to a wider public. 

A workshop was held at NIAS on July 20, 2019 on housing rights, attended by invited academics, housing justice activists, policy makers, and students, as part of the Speculative Urbanism Programme.  

Hemangini Gupta convened a panel, ‘Speculative Urbanism in the Asias: Infrastructures, Aesthetics, Politics’ at the Association for Asian Studies in Asia conference, Bangkok, Thailand, July 1, 2019. Dr. Gupta presented a paper, ‘Towards a Lexicon for the World City: Keywords from Bengaluru and Jakarta. Prof. Carol Upadhya was the discussant for the panel.  

The Speculative Urbanism team gave a public presentation based on our comparative fieldwork titled ‘Jakarta Sinking, Bengaluru Parched: Conversations on the Intersections between Land, Water, Finance, and Planning’, at Ashirvaad, Bangalore, July 29, 2019, organised by the Environment Support Group. 

City at its Limits event series (funded by NSF grant): 

Prem Chandavarkar (Managing Partner, CnT Architects), ‘The Smart City and the Indian Urban Condition’, November 3, 2017 

Malini Ranganathan (Assistant Professor, American University), ‘Situated Ethics of the City: Narrating Corruption and Land in Contemporary Urban India’, February 2, 2018 

Naresh Narasimhan (Architect, Bangalore): ‘Contrapuntal view: Tactical urbanism in Bengaluru’. June 13, 2018 

T.V. Ramachandra (IISc): ‘Lessons of unplanned urbanization: Bengaluru, a dying city (with burning and frothing lakes)’. October 12, 2018 

Nikhil Anand (Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania): ‘City of waters: On leaks, sewage and the uncertain sea’. December 20, 2018 

Public Feminisms Lecture Series: 

Ashwini Tambe (University of Maryland): ‘Academic feminism, public feminism, and #MeToo’. July 4, 2018 

Radhika Govinda (Edinburgh University): ‘Towards a renewal of feminist politics? “Bad girls”, everyday sexism and activist campaigns in millennial India’. January 8, 2019 

V. Geetha (feminist writer and activist, Chennai): ‘Speaking of assault: Expressions and their histories’. March 20, 2019 

Changing India event series (supported by Pratiksha Trust): 

Arvind Narrain (Alternative Law Forum, Bengaluru): ‘Transformative constitutionalism and the decriminalisation of the right to love’. September 24, 2018. 

Prof. Rahamath Tarikere (Kannada University Hampi): ಕರ್ನಾಟಕದ ಅನುಭಾವಿ ಪಂಥಗಳು: ಜನತಾ ಧರ್ಮಗಳು  (Mystic Cults as Peoples' Religion). October 11, 2018. 

Ashish Kothari (Kalpavriksh): ‘Development, environment and human rights: Towards sustainability and equity’. October 30, 2018. 

Mukul Sharma (Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi): ‘“Green and Blue”: Caste, Dalits and Indian environmentalism’. November 16, 2019.  

V. Geetha (feminist writer and activist, Chennai): ‘Speaking of assault: Expressions and their histories’. March 20, 2019. 

Workshop on Languages of Caste: Assertion, Denial and Resistance, February 12, 2019, with invited speakers from across south India. The objective of the workshop, organized by a group of NIAS PhD students from across Schools mentored and supported by Prof. Carol Upadhya, was to explore the role of language in the assertion, denial and resistance of caste. Speakers included Ms. Gogu Shyamala (Hyderabad), Prof. Satyanarayana (EFLU, Hyderabad), Prof. S. Anandhi (MIDS, Chennai), Hulikunte Murthy from Bayalu Balaga, Shilpa Mudbi Kothakota from the Urban Folk Project, Malavika Priyadarshini, NIAS-Exeter PhD student, Asim Siddiqui, A. Manasa and M. Hemanth Kumar from Azim Premji University and Gowri, a social justice activist.  

Jhuma Sen (Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School), ‘Narrative as Justice: Imagining Feminist Justice from #MeToo to Feminist Judgments Projects’, July 12, 2019. 

Patrick Inglis, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Grinnell College (USA), ‘Narrow Fairways: Getting by and Falling Behind in the New India’, October 21, 2019. 

Anand Pandian (Professor, Johns Hopkins University, USA), ‘Walled In: An Anthropological Look at the Politics of Exclusion in Contemporary America’, January 8, 2020.