Malavika Narayan

Malavika Narayan is a Ph.D. student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the spatiality of urban informal economies and how work gets reorganized in contexts of rapid urban transformation. She is interested in unpacking how informal sector workers mobilize the land and capital required for their labor and contribute to the creation of highly productive live-work neighborhoods that are integral to the formal city but remain in varying levels of tension with official plans and policies. Prior to this, Malavika has worked with Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), providing research and programmatic support to the Focal City Delhi project. During this time, she also co-coordinated the Main Bhi Dilli (“I, too, am Delhi”) campaign, which aims to make urban planning in Delhi more inclusive and participatory. Narayan holds a master’s in Political Science from the University of Delhi and was also an Urban Fellow at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bengaluru.