Dr Bear is a specialist on India and ethnographies of the economy, state, time, urban ecology and globalisation. She has researched the history of the Indian railways, showing their influence on the formation of contemporary Indian nationalism, and new forms of labour among international call centre workers in Kolkata. Dr Bear has recently completed a two-year ESRC-funded research project carrying out fieldwork with boatmen, shipyard workers, hydrographers, port bureaucrats and river pilots on the river Hooghly in Kolkata. This work tracks the changes in the socio-nature, religious practices and livelihoods on the river that are emerging in the wake of liberalisation attempts, and the effects speculative processes of planning the future have on urban environments.

Chris Fuller

Professor Emeritus, Anthropology

Professor Chris Fuller specialises in India. He conducted fieldwork among the Nayars and Syrian Christians in Kerala in 1971-2, and the priests at the great temple of Madurai in Tamil Nadu in 1976-7, 1994-5 and on other visits until 2002. During this period, Fuller also worked extensively on the anthropology of popular Hinduism. In 2003-05, he participated in a research project that focused on middle-class company managers and software professionals in Chennai (Madras). In 2005-8, with Haripriya Narasimhan, he carried out research on Tamil Brahmans, focusing on this traditional elite's modern transformation into a migratory, urbanised, trans-national, middle-class community. Fuller’s current scholarly work is on the history of the anthropology of India.

Athar Hussain

Professor, Insititue of Global Affairs

Professor Athar Hussain has research interests on urbanisation trends in China, economic transformation, regional inequality in South Asia, and regional integration. He is a frequent commentator on Indian and Pakistani politics, bilateral relationships, and foreign relations.

Richard Burdett

Professor of Urban Studies and Director of LSE Cities

Ricky Burdett is Professor of Urban Studies and director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age programme. His research focuses on the interactions between the physical and social worlds in the contemporary city and how urbanisation affects social and environmental sustainability. He oversaw ‘Urban India: Understanding the Maximum City’, Urban Age’s examination of the social, economic and physical contours of the four largest metropolitan regions in India.

Philipp Rode

Executive Director, LSE Cities

Philipp Rode is Executive Director of LSE Cities and Senior Research Fellow at LSE. As researcher and consultant he manages interdisciplinary projects comprising urban governance, transport, city planning and urban design. The focus of his current work is on cities and climate change. He has previously researched on governing urban transport and spatial development in India and written on Mumbai’s compact urban form and transport efficiency as a model for a sustainable transport.

Julie King

Researcher, LSE Cities

Julia King is an architectural designer and urban researcher at LSE Cities. At LSE Cities she has worked on ‘Super-diverse streets: Economies and spaces of urban migration in UK Cities’ and is currently working on initiatives in India. Her research is concerned with housing, sanitation infrastructure, urban planning, and participatory design processes. She has won numerous awards including a Holcim Award (2011), SEED Award for ‘Excellence in Public Interest Design’ (2014), Emerging Woman Architect of the Year (2014) and short listed for the World Design Impact Prize (2013) and the Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award (2014). She has taught at the Bartlett School of Architecture, Architectural Association and the CASS, Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design; where she recently completed her PhD-by-practice titled ‘Incremental Cities: Discovering the Sweet Spot for making town-within-a-city’ which looked at resettlement colonies in Delhi, India. Julia also teaches on the MSc City Design and Social Science.

Gareth Jones

Professor of Urban Geography

Professor Jones’ research interests are in urban geography, with a particular interest in how people make use of the city and how cities are represented by policy and practice. He is especially interested in policy practice toward the 'slum' and the representations of urban poverty through media, civil society and practitioner expertise. He has conducted research in Mumbai.

Vernon Henderson

School Professor of Economic Geography

Professor Henderson’s research focuses on urbanisation in developing countries. He also covers topics such as land markets, infrastructure investment, corruption, and disaster aid delivery. He has provided recent policy advice several developing countries, including India.

Romola Sanyal

Assistant Professor of Urban Geography

Dr Sanyal is Assistant Professor in Urban Geography. She is interested in issues of urbanisation, housing and citizenship rights. Her research has looked at the politics of developing refugee camps and colonies in Lebanon and India focusing primarily on refugees from 1947 and 1948. She has published several articles on this. Her interest in questions of citizenship, particularly in India, led to the publication of her co-edited book Urbanizing Citizenship: Contested Spaces in Indian Cities (Sage, 2011). Her recent work has ranged from looking at border politics to the aestheticisation of slums in South Asia.

Sunil Kumar

Lecturer

Dr Kumar’s key research interests are related to urban poverty and urban housing in South Asia. He is also interested in the informal and formal institutions that act as an interface between these two aspects. His recent research work has focused on housing tenure and the urban poor in India, including studies of the urban poor as landlords and tenants and urban labour market changes.