Malini Ranganathan Assistant Professor School of International Service
- Additional Positions at AU
- Faculty Fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Center, School of Public Affairs
- Faculty Co-Lead, Environment Team, Antiracist Research and Policy Center
- Degrees
PhD, University of California, Berkeley
MS, University of California, Berkeley
BA, Bard College, NY
- Bio
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Dr Ranganathan is a critical urban geographer with a broad interest in environmental justice. She uses history, ethnography, critical mapping, and social theory to study the struggles surrounding urban water infrastructure and landed property regimes in India and the US. Much of her research focuses on the politics of water access, real estate development (especially on wetlands), flood risk, and informality in Bangalore/Bengaluru, India. She is interested in the entanglements between colonial history, geographies of social difference (race, caste, gender, class), and contemporary contestations around market-oriented development. She is a recipient of an American Council of Learned Societies-Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant for a collaborative book project across the humanities and geography, Corruption Plots, Imagined Publics: The Ethics of Space in the Millennial City. Dr Ranganathan also investigates property, housing, and environmental racism in America and has written and spoken on abolitionist climate justice in Washington, DC. For an overview of her decolonial and transnational approach to research and teaching, stream this 2019 podcast interview. In her research and teaching more generally, she draws on Marxist geography, postcolonial/decolonial theory, critical race theory, and feminist theory, among other strands. Dr Ranganathan was co-awarded the SIS "Scholar Teacher of the Year" Award in 2018.
Her research is published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Progress in Human Geography, Environment and Planning: A (Economy and Society), Journal of Planning Education and Research, Capitalism Nature Socialism, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban Geography, Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, and Water Alternatives among other journals. Her scholarship also appears in public venues such as e-Flux Architecture, The North Star, Society and Space, and Black Perspectives. She serves on the editorial boards of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers and Environment and Planning: D (Society and Space). Previously, Dr Ranganathan was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and has had research positions at TERI in New Delhi, ENDA-Tiers Monde in Dakar, and the Asian Development Bank in Manila. At SIS, Dr Ranganathan teaches SISU 250 (Environmental Sustainability and Global Health), SISU 349 (Global Cities, Justice, and the Environment), and SIS 620 (Environmental Justice).
- See Also
- Dr Ranganathan's April 2019 talk at "Racial Capitalism" Series at UC Davis
- Dr Ranganathan's March 2019 honorary Treacy Lecture at the University of Wisconsin, Madison
- Decolonizing Infrastructure in India and the US: An Interview with Malini Ranganathan
- Follow Dr Ranganathan on Twitter
- Dr Ranganathan's academic website
- For the Media
- To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.
Partnerships & Affiliations
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Metropolitan Policy Center
Faculty Fellow -
Antiracist Research and Policy Center
Environment Team Co-Lead
Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities
Selected Publications
(*) Indicates SIS student
- Forthcoming (2019). "Empire’s Infrastructures: Racial Finance Capitalism and Liberal Necropolitics", Urban Geography.
- 2019. "Property, Pipes, and Improvement", e-flux Architecture, Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, Columbia University, July 16.
- 2019. "From Urban Resilience to Abolitionist Climate Justice in Washington, DC" (with Eve Bratman). Antipode. Published online June 29, 2019.
- 2019. "A Legacy of Abolition and Love in the Work of a Washington, DC Organizer", The North Star, June 2.
- 2019. "Towards a Critical Geography of Corruption and Power in Late Capitalism" (with Sapana Doshi). Progress in Human Geography 43 (3) 436-457.
- 2019. "Corruption" (with Sapana Doshi) in Antipode Editorial Collective (Eds), Keywords in Radical Geography. Wiley-Blackwell: London.
- 2019. "Political Ecologies of Disposession and Anticorruption: A Radical Politics for the Anthropocene?" (with Sapana Doshi) in H Ernstson and E Swyngedouw (Eds) Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-Obscene: Interruptions and Possibilities. London and New York: Routledge.
- 2018. "Beyond Third World Comparisons: America's Geography of Water, Race, and Poverty". International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Spotlight Series on Parched Cities.
- 2018. "Rule By Difference: Empire, Liberalism, and the Legacies of Urban 'Improvement'". Environment and Planning: A (Economy and Space) 50 (7): 1386–1406. See media coverage "Legacies of Colonial Urban Planning in Bangalore"
- 2018. "The Politics of Participation in Cape Town's Slum Upgrading: The Role of Productive Tension" (with Karly Kiefer (*)). Journal of Planning Education and Research. Published online March 21, 2018.
- 2018. "Rethinking Urban Water Informality" in K Conca and E Weinthal (Eds), Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy.
- 2017. "Hydraulic Politics In/Beyond the World Class City: A Review Forum". Dialogues in Human Geography 7 (3): 349-351.
- 2017. "Endangered City and Hydraulic City: A Review Forum". Society and Space, the blog for the journal Environment and Planning: D.
- 2017. "The Environment as Freedom: A Decolonial Reimagining. Social Science Research Council Items, reprinted in Black Perspectives, African American Intellectual History Society blog.
- 2017. "The Color of Corruption: Whiteness and Populist Narratives" (with Sapana Doshi). Society and Space, the blog for the journal Environment and Planning: D.
- 2017. "Contesting the Unethical City: Land Dispossession and Corruption Narratives in Urban India" (with Sapana Doshi). Annals of the American Association of Geographers 107 (1): 183-199.
- 2016. "Thinking with Flint: Racial Liberalism and the Roots of an American Water Tragedy". Capitalism Nature Socialism 27 (3): 17-33.
- 2015. "Storm Drains as Assemblages: The Political Ecology of Flood Risk in Postcolonial Bangalore", Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 47 (5): 1300-1320.
- 2015. "Water Marginalization at the Urban Fringe: Environmental Justice and Urban Political Ecology Across the North-South Divide" (with Carolina Balazs), Urban Geography 36 (3): 403-423.
- 2014. "Paying for Pipes, Claiming Citizenship: Political Agency and Water Reforms at the Urban Periphery", International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38 (2): 590-608.
- 2014. "Mafias in the Waterscape: Urban Informality and Everyday Public Authority in Bangalore", Water Alternatives 7 (1): 89-105. See popular articles based on my research published in Citizen Matters (2014) and HuffPo (2019).
Multimedia
- 2019. "Decolonizing Infrastructure in India and the United States: An Interview with Malini Ranganathan", EDGE Effects, Center for Culture, History, and the Environment, University of Wisconsin, Madison, June 4, 2019.
- 2019. "Climate Justice in Washington, DC", SIS Breaks it Down.
- 2015. "Why Bengaluru is not Immune to Floods: It's All About Land (and Money)", Citizen Matters, December 10.
- 2014. "Bangalore: High Tech and the Monsoons", London School of Economics and Political Science Urban Age Newspaper Series: Governing Urban Futures.
- 2014. "Improv Cities: Urban Peripheries and the Future", American University TEDx Talk.
Research Interests
Political economy of development, urban inequality and environmental justice, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, feminist theory, the black radical tradition, discourse analysis, ethnography, history, qualitative GIS.
Professional Services
- 2019-present. Editorial Board Member, Environment and Planning: D (Society and Space).
- 2016-present. Editorial Board Member, Annals of the American Association of Geographers.
- 2015-2017. Editorial Board Member, Geography Compass.
- 2015-2017. Elected Board Member, Urban Geography Specialty Group (UGSG), American Association of Geographers (AAG)
- 2015-2017. Elected At-Large Councilor, Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group (CAPE), American Association of Geographers (AAG)
Grants and Sponsored Research
- 2018-2019. Antipode Foundation International Workshop Award for "Rethinking Difference in India: Racialization in Transnational Perspective".
- 2017-2019. American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)-Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Collaborative Research Grant "Corruption Plots, Imagined Publics: The Ethics of Space in the Millennial City" (with Sapana Doshi and David Pike). Read AU Media Release "Plotlines of Corruption" here.
- 2016-2017. Faculty Research Support Grant "Urban Revolution? Anti-Corruption and Environmental Justice in India".
- 2015-2016. Metropolitan Policy Center Faculty Research Grant "Tackling Urban Vulnerability: Lessons for Building Community Resilience and Climate Justice in Washington, DC" (with Eve Bratman).
Honors, Awards, and Fellowships
- 2018. Co-recipient, SIS Scholar-Teacher of the Year Award
- 2011-2013. Post-Doctoral Fellow, Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy (SDEP), Department of Geography and Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
- 2009-2010. Chancellor’s Dissertation-Year Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of California, Berkeley.
- 2007-2008. John L. Simpson Memorial Research Fellowship in International and Comparative Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
- 2007-2008. American Institute of Indian Studies (headquartered at the University of Chicago) Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.
- 2006. Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, University of California, Berkeley.
Professional Presentations
INVITED CAMPUS TALKS (only recent)
- 2019. "The Environment as Freedom: Racial Capitalism and Environmental Justice". Invited to speak at the Mellon Research Initiative in Racial Capitalism at the University of California, Davis.
- 2019. "Racial Liberalism and Environmental Racism in Flint, MI". Invited to speak at the University of Michigan RacismLab.
- 2019. "The Environment as Freedom: Decolonizing Urban Property, Reimagining Justice". Invited to give the annual honorary John Treacy Memorial Lecture (voted on as a "renowned pre-tenure scholar" by Geography graduate students) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
- 2018. "Unauthorized Urbanism: Empire and Property in the Ecological Present". Invited to speak at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
- 2018. "The Infrastructural Turn in Urban Studies and Political Ecology". Invited Panelist at King's College, London.
- 2018. "Unauthorized Urbanism: Liberal Property-Making and the Coloniality of Rule". Invited to speak at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
- 2018. "Unauthorized City: Entanglements of Water, Property, and Rule in Bangalore". Invited to speak by the Duke India Initiative, Nicholas School, and the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University. See media coverage: "Property in Bangalore is a Political Affair".
- 2018. "From Urban Resilience to Anti-Racist Climate Justice in Washington, DC" for the Topics in Environmental Justice Speaker Series. Invited to speak at the University of California, Davis.
- 2018. "Climate of Dispossession: On the Coloniality of Urban Ecologies" for the Decolonial Ecologies: Climate Justice in the Anthropocene Series. Invited to speak at Mellon-Sawyer Seminar on the Anthropocene, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
- 2018. "Dispossession, Liberalism, and the Coloniality of Urban Ecologies". Invited to speak at the Penn Program on Environmental Humanities, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
- 2017. "Racial Liberalism and the Coloniality of Urban Ecologies". Invited to speak at the Ecologies of Social Difference/Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice Institute's "Noted Scholar Series", University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
CONFERENCE PAPERS AND PANELS (only recent)
- 2019. "An Ethics of Antiracism, Abolitionism, and Care in Urban Climate Justice", Urban Affairs Association Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, April 26.
- 2019. "Organizing in Chocolate City: Race, Planning, and Social Justice in Washington, DC", Panelist, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, April 7.
- 2019. "Methodologies for Studying Racial Capitalism", Panelist, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington, DC April 7.
- 2019. "Author Meets Comrades: Rosalind Fredericks' Garbage Citizenship", Panelist American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, April 6
- 2019. Discussant, Urban Geography keynote lecture (given by Deborah Cowen), April 5.
- 2019. "Racial Regimes of Property I, II, III, and IV" (Organizer with Anne Bonds and Introducer), American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, April 4.
- 2018. "Urban Land Grabs as the New-Old Frontier of Capitalist Accumulation and Racial Violence", Panelist, Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, June 22.
- 2018. "Pedagogies of Race and Racialization", Panelist, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 14.
- 2018. "The Political Ecology of Flood Risk and Management Across the North and South", Discussant, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 13.
- 2018. "From Urban Resilience to Abolitionist Climate Justice in Washington, DC", Abolition Ecologies Paper Session, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 13.
- 2018. "Water and Climate Justice", Panelist, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 11.
- 2018. "Racial Finance Capitalism", Discussant, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 10.
- 2018. "Land Justice in the City", Discussant, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 10.