Romola Sanyal

Dr Sanyal joined LSE in 2013 from the Development Planning Unit at UCL. She has previously taught at Rice University, Texas, and Newcastle University. She is interested in architecture, urban geopolitics, urban theory, housing and citizenship rights. She has written on the politics of space in refugee settlements in the global South with a particular focus on Lebanon and India.

Romola's current research work looks at the urbanization of particular areas in Lebanon through humanitarian aid that has come in response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Dr Sanyal obtained her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley.

• Urban and Regional Planning

• International Development

• Refugee and Displacement

• Urban Geopolitics

• Housing

• Citizenship

 Selected recent publications:

• (with Gareth A. Jones) 'Spectacle and Suffering: The Mumbai slum as a worlded space'. Geoforum, vol. 65, October 2015, pp. 431-439

• (with Cecilia L. Chu) 'Spectacular cities of our time'. Geoforum, vol. 65, October 2015, pp. 399-402

• 'Slum Tours as Politics: Global Urbanism and Representations of Poverty'. International Political Sociology, March 2015, 9 (1), pp. 93-96

• 'Urbanizing refuge: interrogating spaces of displacement'. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, (2014) 38 (2). pp. 558-572. ISSN 0309-1317

• 'Hindu Space: Urban Dislocations in Post-Partition Calcutta'. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, (2014), 39 (1) 

• The Work of Exile: Protracted Refugee Situations and the New Palestinian Normal. D.B Monk and J. Mundy (eds) The Post Conflict Environment: Investigation and Critique (2014)

• Co-Edited Special Issue (with Jason Cons) Geographies at the Margins: Borders in South Asia. Political Geography 35 (2013)

• Refugees and the City: An Urban Discussion. Geography Compass, (2012), 6(11).

• Co-edited book (with Dr. Renu Desai) Urbanizing Citizenship: Contested Spaces in Indian Cities. New Delhi: Sage Publications (2011).

• Contesting Refugeehood: Squatting as Survival in Post-Partition Calcutta. Social Identities, 15 (1) special issue: Living through Terror: (Post) conflict, (Post) trauma and the South (2009) S. Perera and A. Traverso (eds).