Kavita Ramakrishnan, BS, MPH, MPhil

PhD Student, Queens’ College

My research investigates how urban residents in the Indian context temporally conceptualize their existence in the city, lending significance for perceptions of citizenship and resistance.

Biography

Qualifications

PhD Candidate, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. 2010-present
MPhil, Development Studies, University of Cambridge, 2010
MPH, Masters of Public Health, Community Health Focus, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), 2009
BS, Bachelors of Science, Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Studies, University of Southern California (USC), 2007

Career

Independent Consultant, South Asian Communities Working Together (Saath): identified unmet needs of South Asian community based in Los Angeles regarding cancer awareness, prevention and support, 2008-2009

Awards and scholarships

Gates Cambridge Trust Scholar, 2009-2013
UCLA School of Public Health ‘Distinguished Teaching Award’, 2008-2009

Research

My current research seeks to theorize constructions of ‘city futures’ among various urbanites, with a particular focus on slum communities. The research aims to articulate an understanding of how urban residents in the Indian context temporally conceptualize their existence in the city, lending significance for perceptions of citizenship and resistance. The research attempts to link city ‘boosterism’ discourse prevalent in Indian mega-cities, or the city-visioning and promotion undertaken by urban governments, to urban subjectivities of the excluded and marginalized. In deconstructing ‘city futures’, I propose using individual movement across the city as a critical lens to capture wider spatial visualizations and future imaginaries. The dynamic relationship between time and space and the mobile enactment of belonging in the city reveals possibilities for people to continually transform urbanscapes, despite the existence of socio-spatial boundaries. The idea of futures on multiple scales as articulated by various groups and individuals, holds bearing here: movement politicizes space and challenges identities, as people negotiate different discourses and development efforts that simultaneously render them as both insiders and outsiders to the city’s present and future. Thus, my research will inform the relationship between envisioned future trajectories and processes by which individuals access and reclaim the city.

Teaching

Teaching Assistant, University of California, Los Angeles School of Public Health: provided in-class instruction, office hour support, and assignment grading for 80 graduate students in the departmental core courses: Introduction to Community Health Sciences; Program Planning; and Program Evaluation

External activities

Gates Cambridge Health and Environment Reading Group – Leader
Department of Geography Urban Reading Group – Member
American Public Health Association (APHA) – Member