Dr Debangana Bose

Research Associate

Critical human geographer interested in the geographies of platform work and urbanism, everyday politics of labour, and new frontiers of displacement and placemaking. I have conducted extensive field research in India.

Biography

Career

• 2019-2021 – Lecturer (Non-tenure), Department of Geography, Maynooth University, National University of Ireland
• 2014 (January – May) – Assistant Professor (non-tenure), Department of Geography, Miranda House, University of Delhi
• 2013 (January – May) – Assistant Professor (non-tenure), Department of Geography, Miranda House, University of Delhi
• 2012 (October – December) – Assistant Professor (non-tenure), Department of Geography, Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi

Qualifications

• 2014-2019 – Ph.D., Department of Geography, Ohio State University, Columbus, United States of America
• 2013 – Visiting Scholar, Department of Economics, Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany (scholar exchange programme with Jawaharlal Nehru University)
• 2010-2012 – M.Phil, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
• 2008-2010 – M.A., Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
• 2005-2008 – B.Sc. in Geography, Lady Brabourne College, University of Calcutta, India

Awards

• 2017 – Presidential Fellow, Graduate School, Ohio State University
• 2016 – National Science Foundation (United States), Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, Geography and Spatial Sciences Program
• 2016 – First Place, Hayes Forum Best Poster Award, Ohio State University
• 2016 – American Geographical Society Council Fellow
• 2016 – Environmental Policy Initiative, Research Grant, Ohio State University
• 2016 – Coca-Cola Critical Difference for Women Research Grant, Ohio State University
• 2015 – Lakshmanan Chatterjee Fellowship for Outstanding PhD. Students, Ohio State University
• 2015 – Rayner Scholarship, Geography, Ohio State University
• 2015 – Fenburr Travel Scholarship, Geography, Ohio State University
• 2015 – Career Development Grant, Council of Graduate Studies, Ohio State University
• 2015 – Global Gateway Grant, Council of Graduate Studies, Ohio State University
• 2014 – Graduate Student Fellowship, Ohio State University.
• 2012 – Prof S.N.Singh Best Poster Award. XXXIV Annual Conference of Indian Association of Study of Population.
• 2009 – Junior Research Fellow, University Grants Commission, India
• 2009 – Junior Research Fellow, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, India

• 2008 – P.C.Chandra Award of Excellence, Outstanding all-round performance, Lady Brabourne College, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India

Research

My research to date focused on three broad critical themes lying at the intersection of Urban Geography and Labour Geography: (1) geographies of urban displacement and exclusion; (2) the everyday politics of placemaking and emplacement among the urban ‘poor’ in peri-urban areas; and (3) digitalisation and the future of work and everyday life in small towns in India.

My ongoing postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge funded by the Philomathia Foundation focuses on the third critical theme. This research provides fresh insights into a question on the future of work with significant implications for research and policy worldwide: how do digital platform-mediated service provisioning restructure employment relations, working conditions, and the workplace in small and ‘overlooked’ cities? This research extends critical scholarship on decentering geographies of platform work and Southern Urbanism.

I am currently working with Professor Bhaskar Vira on a project that focuses on the conditions of employment and the future of decent work in small towns in India. This project will contribute to a major new cross-university programme of enquiry into Decent Work and Youth Livelihoods, hosted by the Department of Geography. This research will complement existing work in the Department of Geography on young people’s experiences of finding work in the Global South, in which the role of technology and the advent of the gig economy is one focus.

My doctoral dissertation research funded by the National Science Foundation in the United States focused on the first two critical themes and examined the lived experiences of displacement and the colliding practices of placemaking among displaced and resettled slum dwellers in Delhi’s periphery. My research extends critical scholarships and debates on subaltern urbanisation, placemaking, survivability, and the right to the city. This research examined the lived experiences of displacement and the colliding practices of placemaking among displaced and resettled slum dwellers in Delhi’s periphery. This research draws from thirteen months of intensive ethnographic research in resettlement sites in Delhi’s periphery where the city-government-planning complex has forcefully resettled slum dwellers evicted from the central zones of the city. I argue that due to lack of employment in the nascent and remote resettlement site, the resettled slum dwellers initiate an informal property sale belying resettlement policy that prohibits the sale of institutional land. In doing so, they transform Delhi’s periphery into an ever‐emerging urban space with colliding trajectories of opportunities and constraints. This research extends critical scholarships and debates on subaltern urbanisation, placemaking, survivability, and the right to the city. My research dehomogenises and identifies three conflicting practices and politics of placemaking among displaced slum dwellers: the politics of land commodification; the politics of patience and incremental homemaking; and the politics of upward mobility. In doing so, my research moves beyond existing binary accounts of seeing the displaced slum dwellers as a homogenous group who are either victims of state-led development-induced displacement or entrepreneurial agents driving subaltern urbanisation using their never-ending resourcefulness.

Publications

Articles

• Bose, D. 2021. Where is the ‘City’ in the Right to the City: Topology, Temporality and Differentiation of Placemaking in Delhi’s Periphery. Area, https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12665
• Ettlinger, N. & Bose, D. 2020. The Ordinariness of Struggle and Exclusion: A View From Across the North-South Urban ‘Divide’. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsaa014
• Raju, Saraswati. and Bose.D. 2016. Women Workers in India and the Cities. Saraswati Raju and Santosh Jatrana (ed). Women Workers in Metro-Cities in India. Cambridge University Press, pp- 36-66. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316459621.003
• Bose, D. 2013. Occupational Mobility in India. Kalpana Markandey, B. Srinagesh, Ashok Kumar Lonavath (eds). Challenges of Urbanization in the 21^st Century, Volume 4: Urbanization and Urban Growth’. Concept Publishing. pp 276-313. https://www.conceptpub.com/servlet/Detail?bookno=00001867
• Bose, D. 2011. Urbanward Labour Mobility, Poverty and Regional Inequality in India. Practicing Geographers. Vol 15 (1). pp 119-131

Creative collaborative output

• Animation titled ‘Gigable Lives’ in collaboration with Anastasiia Haidar and Daria Samarska (student artists at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology), exhibited at the Cambridge Festival 2022 under the programme titled, ‘Life as Data’ in collaboration with other Philomathia Fellows at Cambridge. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-j-Gmq_4Yw

Teaching

• Undergraduate Dissertation Supervisions, University of Cambridge
  • 2023-24, 2022-23
• Undergraduate Supervisions, University of Cambridge
  • 2022: Citizenship, Cities, and Civil Society (Second Year)
  • 2022: Urban Geography (First Year)
  • 2021: The Geographies of Global Urbanism (Third Year)
  • 2021: The Geographies of Work and Employment (Third Year)
  • 2021: Development Theories, Policies, and Practices (Second Year)
• Teaching Experiences, Maynooth University, Ireland
  • 2020, 2021 GY310B: Geography Research Workshops
  • 2020, 2021 GY206: Geography Field Trip (International)
  • 2019, 2020 GY222: Urban Geography
  • 2019, 2020 GY342: Urban Planning and Property Development
• Teaching Experiences, Ohio State University: Full Teaching Responsibility
  • 2019 (January-April) Geog 2500: Cities and their Global Spaces
  • 2016 (May-July) Geog 2750: World Regional Geography (Online)
• Teaching Experiences, Ohio State University: Teaching Assistantship
  • 2017 (January-May) Geog 2750: World Regional Geography (Online)
  • 2016 (August-December) Geog 3600: Space, Power and Political Geography
  • 2016 (January-May) Geog 2400: Economic & Social Geography
  • 2015 (August-December) Geog 2100: Introduction to Human Geography
• Invited Lectures
  • 2020 (January) GST11: Professional Development and Employability, Maynooth University
  • 2018 (October) Geog 5501: Urban Spaces in the Global Economy, Ohio State University
    (Lecture: ‘Postcolonial land governance and displacement in the global south‘)
  • 2018 (February) Geog 5802: Globalization and Environment, Ohio State University
    (Lecture: ‘Gentrification and urban informality: A transnational perspective‘)
• Teaching Experiences, Institutions In India: Full Teaching Responsibility
  • 2014 (January-May) Miranda House, Department of Geography, University of Delhi
    Courses: Urban Planning in India, Cartographic Techniques
  • 2013 (January-May) Miranda House, Department of Geography, University of Delhi
    Courses: Analytical Physical Geography, Regional Planning in India, Statistical Methods in Geography
  • 2012 (October-December) Dyal Singh College, Department of Geography, University of Delhi
    Courses: Economic Geography, Cartographic Techniques, Remote Sensing

External activities

• Book Reviews Editor, Space and Polity