Dr Niranjana R

Profile

I’m a human geographer interested in the lives lived around waterways. Building on experience as a journalist reporting on urban development and culture in south India, my work in rooted in ethnographic engagement with the everyday life of cities and the politics of alterity it often points to.

My PhD thesis (UCL, 2018) titled ‘Infrastructures with a pinch of salt: comparative technopolitics of desalination in Chennai, India and London, UK’ critically engages with the role of engineers, water managers and state actors in shaping urban waterscapes.

In 2018-19, I worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in an ERC-funded project titled ‘Rethinking Urban Nature’ at the University of Cambridge, focusing on Chennai’s wetland geographies and the social movements emerging around them.

From 2019-22, I held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the London School of Economics & Political Science, focusing on Chennai’s coastal ecologies, attending in particular to issues of caste, labour and environmental justice in this material geography. I’m currently preparing a monograph drawing primarily on research from this project. 

In 2025-26, I’ll be based at the French Institute of Pondicherry, on a Leverhulme International Fellowship.

Teaching

UG teaching

GEG5155 – Development Geographies (convenor)

GEG6153 – Urban Water In and Beyond the Pipes (convenor)

GEG6155 – Critical Environmental Studies

GEG4015 – Malta: Sustainable Transitions (field trip)

PG teaching

GEG7137 – Retheorising Global Development (convenor)

Research

Research Interests:

Water, urban nature & infrastructure

Since the PhD, my research has been about water in its many forms, either as infrastructure channelled through pipes or in its seemingly natural state as wetlands, rivers, lakes and groundwater.

Funded by the UCL Impact PhD Studentship, I studied Chennai’s water supply and household access infrastructures to trace the distinct technological cultures and social structures that shaped water flows in the city. This study followed the growing popularity of reverse osmosis desalination to make potable the city’s deteriorating groundwater resources and more ambitiously, the sea at its doorstep. It was then placed in comparative analysis with techno-political processes governing water supply in London. Research articles from this study have been published in Geoforum & Urban Studies journals.

I have since directed my attention towards the estuarine, wetland geographies of Chennai, engaging with the political movements emerging around issues of environmental and social justice in these ecologies.

Coastal Chennai

Much of the above research trajectory has also grown from ethnographic research in the city of Chennai in south India. This longitudinal engagement will culminate in a monograph on coastal ecologies in the city. Currently at the proposal stage, the book will draw primarily on my Leverhulme Trust-funded postdoctoral research with fishers and other labouring classes & castes on the city’s marshy, estuarine coast.

Coromandel Coast & the Indian Ocean World

I’m expanding on the above work with preliminary research on agrarian & plantation geographies of the Coromandel Coast and the wider Indian Ocean world. I’ve been awarded a Leverhulme International Fellowship to pursue this project, based at the French Institute of Pondicherry in 2025-26.

Food, labour & ecology

I’ve collaborated with other researchers & artists in south India to publish a bilingual (Tamil & English) book on life on the Coromandel Coast in the form of a community cookbook, using recipes to tell stories about the place and the people. The idea of the cookbook originated from research participants in response to a climate of dominant caste and capitalist marginalisation of fishing labour & the cultures of alterity this has engendered in Chennai and its surrounds. Funded by the Antipode ‘Right to the Discipline’ Grant, the book was released in early 2025 among community & public readers in Chennai. I’m interested in building further on this strand of research, exploring the relationship between food, labour & alterity in other ecologies as well.

Publications

In academic journals

Between fragments and ordering: engineering water infrastructures in a postcolonial city. Geoforum. 2021. 119, 1-10.

An experiment with the minor geographies of major cities: Infrastructural relations among the fragments. In Robinson, J. (ed) ‘Comparative Urbanism: Tactics for conceptual renewal, extension and innovation in global urban studies’. Urban Studies. 2022. 59 (8), 1556-1574.

Inhabiting the Extensions. Dialogues in Human Geography. 8 May 2023. [With Simone, A., Somda, D., Torino, G., Irawati, M., Bathla, N., Castriota, R., Veglio, S. & Chandra, T.]

Extending dialogues on the urban. Dialogues in Human Geography. 11 April 2024. [Author Response with Simone, A., Somda, D., Torino, G., Irawati, M., Bathla, N., Castriota, R., Veglio, S. & Chandra, T.]

Ecologies of alterity: rethinking the coastal frontier. Urban Geography. 2025 [Online First].

In edited volumes

Difference & Disobedience: Inhabiting the Southern Anthropocene. In Jensen, C. B. (ed). Southern Anthropocenes: A Companion. Routledge. (Forthcoming, September 2025).

Other academic avenues

‘“Do you drive a two-wheeler?” Of risk and relatability while doing ethnographic fieldwork in Chennai’. Blog Entry in Field Research Methods Lab. LSE. 3 March 2021.

‘Distributed Labour: Socialising Infrastructures Through Engineering Work in Chennai’. In Labouring Urban Infrastructures, A digital magazine published from the Labouring Urban Infrastructures workshop. Durham University. June 2019.

‘Local Waterscapes & Global Technologies: Micropolitics of Sustainability in Chennai’. Annual Workshop & Working Paper Series. SOAS South Asia Institute, London. June 2015

In popular media

‘Exploring Chennai, City of Fish’. In Whetstone Journal. 2 October 2020.

Book

Neidhal Kaimanam/Seasoned by the Sea. (with Bhagath Singh A). Uyir Publications. 2025. ISBN: 978-81-982586-3-2

Supervision

PhD (Sept 2024 - ongoing). Ramu Avala. (Mis) Development on the Coast : Ocean Frontier Development and Exclusion of Fishing Communities in India.

PhD (visiting, 2024). Saanchi Saxena, Urban & Regional Development, Politecnico di Torino.

I invite enquiries from students interested in pursuing a PhD on the following topics, broadly defined. I’m happy to work with students in developing their research proposal and seeking funding. But, please do prepare a draft of your proposal (it does not have to meet any specific expectation of format, length or language) when approaching me. I’m also happy to support, to the best of my ability, any issues related to visas, care and other responsibilities etc.

Non-exhaustive list of topics:

Urban water & nature

Rivers, coastal and oceanic geographies

Food, ecology & society

Fishers, fishing and foraging

Animal, marine life, insect and plant geographies

Food geographies

Infrastructure, techno-politics, political ecology, science & technology studies

Environmental politics, urban political movements

Environmental justice, caste/race/gender & the environment

Caste, socio-spatial alterity, identity, community & belonging

Public Engagement

Podcast

In 2020-21, when the pandemic confined work to the space of the home, I initiated, hosted and produced a podcast series titled ‘Alainagaram’ (alai: wave, nagaram: city), discussing urbanism on and along sea. It was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and an Impact Grant from LSE Research & Innovation. It is currently hosted on my website and is available to listen from Google & Spotify.

[Invited speaker]. Chennai, Waters, Coastlines and Caste. In Confronting Caste, a public facing podcast series run by the Kings India Institute. 27 November 2020. Available at: https://soundcloud.com/kings-india-institute/confronting-caste-episode-3

Coastal community cookbook

I’ve collaborated with other researchers & artists in south India to publish a bilingual (Tamil & English) book on life on the Coromandel Coast in the form of a community cookbook, using recipes to tell stories about the place and the people. The idea of the cookbook originated from research participants in response to a climate of dominant caste and capitalist marginalisation of fishing labour & the cultures of alterity this has engendered in Chennai and its surrounds. Funded by the Antipode ‘Right to the Discipline’ Grant, the book was released in early 2025 among community & public readers in Chennai.