More-than-human urbanisms and sacred riverfronts: Hindu nationalism, informal authority, and the everyday politics of urban space in India
Funding period: 1 February 2026 – 1 November 2026
Type of funding:
International Fellowship
DOI: https://doi.org/10.69752/QF97-7004
Award Number: USF-INT-251008
Raina Ghosh is a human geographer with expertise in urban political ecology, water-society relations and urban spatial politics. She received her PhD in Geography from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, where her research examined everyday processes of city-making at the water–city interfaces of Kolkata’s riverine ghats along the river Hooghly, tracing how historical, cultural, and political-economic dynamics shape spatial power relations and the production of urban space in South Asian Cities. She was an Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) Doctoral Fellow (2021–2024) and a Writing Urban India Fellow (2.0) in 2022 (a USF-Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi Initiative).
Before joining the Fellowship, she worked as a Manager and Senior Researcher with the Digital Empowerment Foundation in New Delhi, where she led research and advocacy on digital exclusion, platform accountability, and gendered access to technology.
As a USF International Fellow (2025), Dr Raina will spend nine months at the University of Amsterdam, under the mentorship of Prof. Dr Rivke Jaffe, Professor of Urban Geography, Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies. Her Fellowship project aims to examine how sacred riverfronts are reshaped by Hindu nationalist urbanism, informal authority (dadagiri) and vernacular, everyday practices, where rivers, deities, and ritual infrastructures act as more-than-human agents in politicising urban spaces and remaking urban territories.
During the Fellowship, she will develop two peer-reviewed journal articles and a monograph proposal, building upon her doctoral research based on ethnographic and historical work on Kolkata and Varanasi’s (India) riverfronts.
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