Research Agenda & Themes
If you are unable to access an article or book chapter due to a paywall, please email me and I will be happy to send you a PDF.
In addition to the projects below, I have been involved with a collaborative, multidisciplinary, and multi-sited project on the contradictions of world-class city-making in Jakarta and Bengaluru. You can read more about here: https://www.speculativeurbanism.net/
Urban Water Politics
As an urban geographer and political ecologist, my research explores themes of water politics, environmental expertise, adaptation to environmental threats, and environmental justice in cities.
Empowering Resilience in a Sinking City
Funded by the British Academy, this collaborative research project between researchers at King’s College London and the Resilience Development Institute uses participatory research design to facilitate collaboration between data and social scientists, communities and community organisations, and artists to produce a public art exhibition and a decision support system for Penjaringan, a subdistrict of North Jakarta.
Political Ecologies of Speculation Urbanism: Understanding Jakarta’s Water Crisis
Funded by the Regional Studies Association and Institute for Human Geography, this research asks “what are the impacts of speculative urbanism on water regimes, and how do water crises impact the real estate sector?”
Urban Flood Management, Policy Mobilities and Networks of Expertise
By exploring the planning, promotion and contestation of a major flood management project in Jakarta, my doctoral research seeks to explain why a project that does not address the primary factor worsening flood events in Jakarta was nonetheless pursued as a solution to the city’s increasingly severe and frequent flooding.
Urbanization, Displacement and Evictions
My research in Jakarta also tracks processes of displacement and eviction, situating these within a broader context of urbanization and socio-ecological change. The increased pressure on low-income neighborhoods as a result of ostensibly benevolent environmental interventions constitutes one of the most significant contemporary urban planning challenges.
Nature, Technology and Environmental Change
A third area of my research critically questions of knowledge production in relation to emerging technologies relating to environmental management. Research and forthcoming publications have examined these questions in relation to community-orientated forms of climate modeling, and artificial intelligence (AI) and environmental data justice.