Faculty Profile: Nidhi Subramanyam

Nidhi Subramanyam

Assistant Professor, Department of Geography & Planning

Nidhi Subramanyam.Nidhi Subramanyam is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography & Planning. She obtained her bachelor of architecture from the University of Mumbai; a master of regional planning from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; and her PhD in city and regional planning from Cornell University.

Subramanyam’s professional and research experiences span architectural design, economic and community development, climate adaptation planning, urban governance, and water-sanitation infrastructure planning in India, Canada, South Africa and the United States.

Subramanyam’s ongoing research investigates just approaches to planning and governing water and wastewater infrastructures in the face of rapid urbanization and the growing impacts of climate change. Her most recent projects have focused on planning, governance and water-sanitation infrastructures in small cities and geographies undergoing rural-urban transitions in India. She is also involved in collaborative research projects on secondary city governance in South Africa and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on socially marginalized migrant workers in India.

Subramanyam’s work on urban water governance, climate change adaptation, land dispossession and rural-urban transitions has appeared in the journals Water International, Water Policy, and Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. She continues to work on projects that critically examine the planning of climate-resilient infrastructures and the use of sustainability indicators in urban planning to advance ideas and practices that produce just and equitable cities.

View Nidhi Subramanyam’s departmental profile