primary management team

I am a Research Fellow in the working package 'Translating Research into Practice' for KNOW. We focus on investigating the challenges of knowledge translation processes at the global and local levels, and support city research partners to influence policy and planning practices. My work is focused particularly at the international level, seeking to understand how localised knowledge and practices can inform agendas at the global level, as well as how those agendas can better speak to localised realities.

My research interests focus on citizen participation and governance, gender and diversity, and urban inequalities (especially housing and infrastructure). My PhD work was informed by the principles of action-research, and was conducted in partnership with the INGO Practical Action. It focused on the 'everyday politics' of water infrastructure for informal settlement residents in Kathmandu, Nepal.  It examined the micro-politics of how gender, tenure relations, and ethnicity shaped how diverse residents interacted with the socio-technical aspects of infrastructure, impacting a sense of citizenship.

As a social development practitioner, I have partnered with organizations in cities in Nepal, Kenya, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, and the UK to support community-driven processes of planning. I am particularly interested in the use of participatory methodologies, the ethics of action-research, and critical pedagogies for urban planners and practitioners.