Pushpa Arabindoo’s brilliant paper on the 2015 Chennai floods has just been published. “Recognising the need for a more robust (post-) disaster discussion, this paper offers an anatomy of the floods that begs a broader rethink of 21st-century urban disasters and argues that the current discourse offered by the social science of disaster is insufficient […]
Southern reaches of the Pallikaranai Marsh. Photograph: Beth Cullen In early December we made our first visit to Chennai with students from DS18, Master of Architecture design studio. Our stay lasted just over two weeks during which we fully immersed ourselves in the city. The majority of the trip was focused on a week-long Water […]
From this Thursday onwards, the MONASS research team will be expanded by the arrival of its two grant funded PhD fellowship holders, Harshavardhan Bhat and Anthony Powis. Harshavardhan has a background in research and political practice, having previously worked on strategic consulting projects in South India and Rwanda. He’s an alumnus of the 2015/16 postgraduate […]
Infrastructural urbanism: assembling the techno-political city | Niranjana Ramesh In the third Monsoon Assemblages seminar, Niranjana Ramesh, PhD candidate at the department of Geography of UCL, London, presented parts of her on-going research comparing desalination plants, and their underpinning policies, in Chennai, India, and London, UK. Of her thesis, titled “Techno-politics of urban water: the case […]
In October 2016, I interviewed Dr Andrew Turner, MONASS Advisory Board member, the the UK’s leading monsoon scientist based in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. The following is a transcript of part of our interview: LB: Tell me a little about your work on the monsoon here in the UK, Andrew. […]