Sahil Sasidharan

Sahil Sasidharan is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography. He is trained as an architect with a Masters of Planning (specializing in Housing) from the School of Planning & Architecture, Delhi in India, and a mid-career MA in Cities and Global Development from the University of Sheffield in the U.K. Prior to commencing his Ph.D. in the U.S., Sahil worked as an urban planning practitioner-cum-researcher for almost nine years in India’s urban development sector across public, private, non-profit and international development organizations. He worked in roles that prioritized research, policymaking and capacity building around issues of equitable access to land, housing and governance in both large and medium-sized cities of India. As an urban geographer, his core interests lie in understanding the uneven impact of digital technologies in the information era on planning and land management processes in the post-colonial global South. Informed by his diverse professional and academic exposure to contemporary real estate and planning practices in India, his doctoral research aims to understand processes of socio-spatial marginalization engendered by colonial, biological and digital epistemes that intersect to inform South Asia’s agrarian mode of urbanization. With the generous support of the Scott-Kloeck Jenson Fellowship, Sahil will conduct fieldwork in peripheral villages within India’s National Capital Territory of Delhi that have been earmarked for planned urbanization. There he will study ongoing processes of policymaking, property-making and attendant socio-economic marginalization happening at the rural fringes of India’s capital city.

Read on about Sahil’s experience in India here.