Shahana Chattaraj is a Visiting Fellow at CPR. Her research centres on urban political economy and governance in developing cities, and the socio-spatial, political and developmental dimensions of urbanisation, planning and infrastructure development. She is also interested in digital technology, informalisation and the future of work in cities in India and globally. She applies a cross-disciplinary lens in her research, integrating sociological, political economy and public policy perspectives.
At CPR, she works with the urbanisation team. She is currently working on a monograph, Shanghai Dreams: State Power, Governance and Politics in the project to Transform Mumbai; as well as articles on the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), planned urbanisation and local governance in the NCR outskirts, and the ‘uber economy’ in New Delhi and London. She has published books, papers and policy briefs on slums and informal settlements, urban planning in India, Mumbai’s urban governance and politics, and the DMIC. In addition to her research, Dr Chattaraj has advised policy-makers, undertaken consulting projects and collaborates with urban practitioners.
Dr Chattaraj holds a PhD from Princeton University in Public Policy, a Masters degree in urban planning and international development from MIT, and Bachelors degree in Architecture from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. She is also an Associate Fellow at the India Development Foundation, an independent policy research institute, in Gurgaon, where she is helping develop a research programme on urbanisation.
She has previously held fellowships and taught at Oxford University and the University of Pennsylvania. She is a trained, if lapsed, architect and planner, and has worked for several years in international development, including at the United Nations Population Fund and the World Bank.
