Renu Desai is Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban Equity, CEPT University (Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University), Ahmedabad. She was formerly a Research Associate at Durham University, UK. She has a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines the politics of urban development and citizenship in Ahmedabad, and focuses on the practices that constitute its postindustrial remaking as well as their intersections with the remaking of the city by Hindutva politics. She is also involved in a joint research project on the politics of sanitation and water in Mumbai’s informal settlements. Her research interests include urban informality, planning practices and new modes of urban governance, housing struggles, and questions around violence, identity, and urban space, particularly in India.
Romola Sanyal is Lecturer in Global Urbanism at the School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape, Newcastle University. She has a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research explores the urbanization of refugee spaces with a particular focus on the Middle East and South Asia. She has published in journals such as Urban Studies, Social Identities and Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review. She is currently working on a book manuscript based on her doctoral dissertation and is also collaborating with other scholars as part of the Post-Conflict Environments Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.