Events

The Centre for Policy Research invites you to a talk on:

Hinterland Ecologies in the Anthropocene

Thursday, 4th June 2026, 4:00 PM IST

Speaker:
Dr. Pushpa Arabindoo, Associate Professor in Geography & Urban Design, Department of Geography, University College London (UCL)

Moderator:
Dr. Partha Mukhopadhyay, Senior Fellow, CPR

This event will be held in a hybrid mode at the CPR Conference Room and online via Zoom. Please register below to attend.

Register to attend in person
Register to attend via Zoom

About the Talk

Following the ‘unprecedented nature’ of the 2015 floods (Arabindoo 2016), the southern Indian city of Chennai has been undertaking a series of flood control/mitigation initiatives amidst an acknowledgement and awareness of a wider riverine eco-system. It has involved a hydrological mapping of a watershed region that exists largely outside of the metropolitan boundary but overlaps considerably with the city’s hinterland, a region marked by rapid, post-metropolitan growth. As a major economic space of territorial speculation, there has been a persistent neglect of the hinterland’s ecological function as a landscape forcing the question: might the hinterland be re-read as a ‘landscape as territory’ (Olóriz SanJuán, 2019) whereby, underlining the geophysical characteristics through an ecological lens allows us to engage simultaneously with the hinterland and the watershed. This talk is an attempt at opening up an alternative way of thinking the two together, accommodating the uncertain and shifting terrain of land and water, bringing a ‘humid thinking’ within the remit of planning, in this case, the city’s ongoing preparation of its Third Master Plan. It explores the potential of more-than-human planning as a practice that is a reparation of the ecological function in the watershed while addressing the ongoing urbanisation of the hinterland.

About the Speaker
Dr. Pushpa Arabindoo trained in architecture and urban design before completing her PhD in Planning from the London School of Economics. She is an Associate Professor in Geography & Urban Design at the Department of Geography, University College London as well as Vice-Dean (Global Engagement) for the Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences.

Within the Urban Lab Cross-Faculty Collective she leads the priority research theme of Hinterland and is also a deputy director of UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies. Her research is largely set in the southern Indian city of Chennai where her investigations on water and waste infrastructure cut through explorations of everyday politics to broader questions of sustainable planning and governance.