Nidhi Subramanyam (M.R.P. ’14, Ph.D ’21) was recently awarded the prestigious Gill-Chin Lim Award by the ACSP for her dissertation titled, Planning the Urban Features of a Small City and its Rural Past: Governance and Water Infrastructures in Tiruppur, India.
In recognition of the commitment of the late Gill-Chin Lim to the study of humanistic aspects of globalization, the ACSP Global Planners Educators Interest Group (GPEIG) established the “Gill-Chin Lim Award for the Best Dissertation on International Planning” in his name. This award recognizes superior scholarship in a doctoral dissertation completed by a student enrolled in an ACSP-member school.
Subramanyam’s research examines how emerging plans for water infrastructure production and operations in transitioning geographies intersected with existing governance structures and the urban political economy to address inequalities in water access. The growing infrastructure turn in the social sciences inspired her to interrogate if and how water formed the terrain supporting demands for rights to the city (and urban futures) in these places.
Subramanyam is now an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. She is also a faculty affiliate with the School of Cities, the Data Sciences Institute, and the Centre for South Asian Studies. Her research interests lie at the intersections of urban governance, water security, and sustainable urbanization in cities of the Global South.
She leads several interdisciplinary, mixed methods research projects focused on water infrastructures in the Greater Toronto Region and in southern India, which examine how emerging plans and planning processes for drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructures enable just adaptation, enhance water security for marginalized communities, and produce more equitable, safe, and livable places
Subramanyam is excited about developing some of her dissertation ideas further through collaborations with colleagues and students who share her interests in water infrastructure planning, WASH justice, and urban India.