Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Fields of Study
- Environment & Climate
- Policy & Planning
- Social & Political Geography
- Urban
Areas of Interest
Planning in the Global South, Urban governance, Water-sanitation infrastructure planning, Climate change adaptation, The politics of dispossession, Ethnographic, participatory, and qualitative research methods, Urbanization and rural-urban transitions in South Asia.
Biography
Dr. Nidhi Subramanyam’s ongoing research investigates just approaches to plan and govern water and wastewater infrastructures in the face of rapid urbanization and the growing impacts of climate change. She also investigates questions on urban governance and rural-urban transitions in cities of the global South. At their core, all her projects interrogate how planning processes reflect and reinforce the status quo in moments of transition and how different social groups contest inequalities and transform planning at such moments to create just and sustainable futures.
Dr. Subramanyam is a faculty affiliate with the School of Cities, the Data Sciences Institute, and the Centre for South Asian Studies at University of Toronto. She welcomes inquiries from undergraduate and graduate students interested in pursuing water-sanitation infrastructure planning, planning and governance in cities of the Global South, rural-urban transitions, just adaptation, environmental dispossessions, and critical data studies as it applies to environmental planning.
Publications
Articles
Subramanyam, N. & Bouma, D. (2024, Online first) Migrating injustices in the small city: drought-impacted interstate migrant workers’ experiences in Tiruppur’s sanitation sector. Climate and Development, DOI: 10.1080/17565529.2024.2330978
Carswell, G., De Neve, G., & Subramanyam, N. (2022, Online first). Getting home during lockdown: migration disruption, labour control and linked lives in India at the time of Covid-19.Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(19), 4603-4621.
Subramanyam, N., & Marais, L. (2022, Online first). Making Mangaung Metro: The politics of metropolitan reform in a South African secondary city. Urban Studies, 59(14), 2893-2911.
Subramanyam, N., & Kudva, N. (2021) Acquiescence in the face of dispossession in the Mahindra World City Special Economic Zone, Tamil Nadu, India. Environment & Planning C: Politics and Space, 39(1): 114-131.
Subramanyam, Nidhi. (2020) A small improvement: Small cities lag in expanding household water coverage across urban India. Water Policy, 22(3): 468-482.
Special Issue
MacAlister, C., & Subramanyam, N. Eds. (2018) Adaptive water management in the face of climate change: Innovative solutions from the global South. Water International, 43(2).