Naomi Prachi Hazarika

NAOMI HAZARIKA, then a graduate student at University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, was awarded funding in April 2023 to aid research on “Urban ‘Re’-development: Financialization, Caste and Embodied Infrastructural Realities of Slum Redevelopment in Delhi, India,” supervised by Dr. Yaffa Truelove. This doctoral project examines the policy of slum redevelopment named “In-Situ Slum Redevelopment and Rehabilitation on Public-Private Partnership Model 2019” implemented by Delhi Development Authority (DDA) in the city of Delhi to study the historical and geographic contingencies that make it possible for private capital and the postcolonial state to push for projects that translate into the dispossession and displacement of historically marginalized communities in Indian cities. The study draws from feminist geography scholarship and anti-caste literature to center embodied approaches in order to examine the unequal lived experiences of slum redevelopment across intersections of caste and gender firmly rooted in the everyday, lived and bodily dimensions. Broadly, this work engages with current debates in the field of urban geography, economic geography, and infrastructural studies rooted in critical perspectives from the Global South.