About
Tanvi is a research and impact fellow with the Birmingham Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action (BISCA), University of Birmingham. She is also a visiting fellow with the LSE-Fudan Global Public Policy Hub in Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a social scientist working on contextualising urban governance mechanisms and climate action in South Asia. Her recent work focuses on knowledge exchanges between Indian and UK cities on heatwave governance.
Over the last decade, her research has focused on a range of climate adaptation, justice, and governance issues in the global South. At the Indian Institute for Human Settlements she worked on informal settlements and climate justice issues in India as part of the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia project. During her PhD in Political Science at Heidelberg University, her research focused on water politics and government policymaking capacities in small town India. As post-doctoral researchers with King’s College London, she worked on the Tomorrow’s Cities project to co-develop a pro-poor, inclusive, multi-hazard risk assessment framework for cities of the global South (Nepal, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Kenya, Tanzania, Turkey, Palestine etc.). Her recent research at LSE focused on critically examining climate governance frameworks from a decolonisation and contextualisation perspective. Inspired by her research and experiences, she co-developed the Frontiers for Just Cities in South Asia Network, an early career researcher network working on urban governance issues in South Asia.
Selected publications:
· Deshpande T., and Jha H., (forthcoming). The Emergence of South Asia’s First Urban Heatwave Action Plan, in Francis Ludlow and Eva Jobbova (eds), Climate, in Georgina Endfield and Poul Holm (eds), Oxford Intersections: Environmental Change and Human Experience.
· Deshpande, T., Pelling, M., Hope, M., and Ojal, M. (forthcoming). Critical learning: a pathway towards transformative action. Environment and Urbanisation
· Gentile R., Deshpande T., Ozer E., Shrestha N., Amatya S., Guragain R., Pelling M., Mcloskey J., (2025). Tomorrow's Cities risk agreement approach: utilising the analytical, communication and convening power of science for inclusive, risk-sensitive urban planning. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. Doi: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105659
· Deshpande T., (2025). Municipal capacities and institutional responses in the age of climate uncertainties. Earth System Governance. Doi: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100243
Qualifications and memberships
· Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, London, UK
· PhD in Political Science, Heidelberg University, Germany
· MSc in Climate Change, University College London, UK
· Dual BSc in Chemistry and Environmental Science, Fergusson College, University of Pune, India