Home

B.Arch. (Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture, Mumbai)


M.A (Frankfurt, Germany)


Ph.D. (University of Melbourne)

Dr. Ishita Chatterjee

Associate Professor

Connect with me
ORCID ID 0000-0002-8530-6062
Key Expertise informal urbanism, urban inequality, spatial justice, housing justice, urban citizenship, displacement, coercive environmentalism, architectural pedagogy,

B.Arch. (Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture, Mumbai)


M.A (Frankfurt, Germany)


Ph.D. (University of Melbourne)


Biography

Ishita Chatterjee is an architect and urban designer who worked in India and China before joining academia. She is an Associate Professor at the Jindal School of Art and Architecture. She has a PhD from the University of Melbourne. Her work focuses on informal urbanism, housing rights, spatial justice, and architectural pedagogy. 

She co-authored the book Atlas of Informal Settlement: Understanding Self-Organized Urban Design. She advocates for in-situ upgrading and land rights for basti residents. She received an international grant ‘Antipode Foundation’s Right to the Discipline grant’ in 2023 for her work on ‘Urban Natures and Informal Settlements: Resisting Coercive Environmentalism and Forced Evictions.’ She has been an active participant in social movements on housing rights in India. Her words have been published in international academic journals and The Wire, Outlook, Scroll, The Leaflet, The Bastion, The Conversation, and LSE blogs among others. She has been interviewed by Hindustan Times, NDTV, and 3CR community radio in Melbourne. 

Housing, Planning and Policy

Architectural Obsessions

Architectural Atelier - Rethinking Rehabilitation Housing

Urban Economic Systems

What is research?

Wiley Prize 2021 best paper for the article ‘Rising inequalities, deepening divides: Urban citizenship in the time of COVID-19’ in Geographical Research, 2022

Urban Natures and Informal Settlements: Resisting Coercive Environmentalism and Forced Evictions, Antipode Foundation “Right to the Discipline” grant, 2023

Chatterjee, I. (2024) ‘We pollute, you pay: Forests, bastis and environmental injustice in India’. The Leaflet. https://theleaflet.in/we-pollute-you-pay-forests-bastis-and-environmental-injustice-in-india/

Dovey, K., Shafique, T., van Oostrum, M., Chatterjee, I. & Pafka, E., (2023). ATLAS OF INFORMAL SETTLEMENT: Understanding Self-organized Urban Design. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Recio, R. B., Wolff, W., Alam, A., Routray, S., Gaisie, E., Marin-Toro, A., Chatterjee, I. and Islam, N. (2023) ‘Book Review: Urban citizenship in the global south: Critical reflections on the tactics and counter-tactics of the urban poor’. New Zealand Geographer. https://doi.org/10.1111/nzg.12353

Chatterjee, I. (2022) ‘No city for Khori Gaon residents: Forced eviction during a pandemic in the name of forest conservation’. Radical Housing Journal. Vol 4(2). (pp.111-137). https://doi.org/10.54825/JALK6985

Recio, R., Chatterjee, I., Lata, L.N., Dongal, N., (2022). ‘Whose vision, which city? Planning and unseeing in urban Asia’. In Bobic, N., & Haghighi, F. (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space and Politics, VOL I. Violence, Spectacle and Data (1st ed.). Routledge. (pp.76-93) https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003112464

Chatterjee, I. & Kastia, A. (2022) ‘Community toilets in Shivaji Nagar are inadequate and unevenly distributed’, Citizen Matters. https://mumbai.citizenmatters.in/shivaji-nagar-requires-toilets-designed-based-on-the-needs-of-the-community-42858

Chatterjee, I. (2022) ‘How Bulldozers Dehumanise The Urban Poor’, Outlook. https://www.outlookindia.com/national/how-bulldozers-dehumanise-the-urban-poor-news-195958

Chatterjee, I. (2022) ‘Behind the façade of forest conservation lay one lakh displaced residents of Khori Gaon’, The Bastion. https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/environment/urban-ecology/behind-the-facade-of-forest-conservation-displaced-residents-khori-gaon/

Recio, R. B., Lata, L. N., & Chatterjee, I. (2021). ‘Rising inequalities, deepening divides: Urban citizenship in the time of COVID-19’. Geographical Research, (pp.1– 14). Doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-5871.12495

Chatterjee, I., & Shafique, T. (2021) Denial of the Ordinary. In Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand: 37, What If? What Next? Speculations on History’s Futures, edited by Kate Hislop and Hannah Lewi, (pp.411-418). Perth: SAHANZ, 2021.

Chatterjee, I. (2021) ‘How Khori Gaon Residents, Now Facing Eviction, Were Forgotten During the Pandemic’, The Wire. https://thewire.in/rights/how-khori-gaon-residents-now-facing-eviction-received-no-help-during-the-pandemic

Menon, M. & Chatterjee, I. (2021) Why the Haryana Govt Must Not Evict One Lakh Residents of Khori Gaon, The Wire. https://thewire.in/urban/khori-gaon-haryana-urban-poor-eviction

Dovey, K., van Oostrum, M., Chatterjee, I., & Shafique, T. (2020). ‘Towards A Morphogenesis of Informal Settlement’. Habitat International, 104, 102240. Doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2020.102240

Dovey, K., Shafique, T., van Oostrum, M. & Chatterjee, I. (2020) ‘Informal Settlement is Not a Euphemism for ‘Slum’. International Development Planning Review, (pp.1-13).

McLaughlan, R., & Chatterjee, I. (2020). ‘What works in the architecture studio? Five strategies for optimising student learning’. The International Journal of Art & Design Education, 39(3), (pp.550-564).

Chatterjee, I., Sabri S., & Aschwanden G., (2020). ‘Urban data and its role in creating and addressing inequity’. In De Souza, R. (Ed.), Data and inequity: Who’s missing in big data? (pp. 36 -43).

Recio, R., Chatterjee, I., Lata, L.N., (2020). ‘Widening Urban Divide: COVID-19 and the unequal citizenship’. In Defeating COVID-19 The pandemic that struck the world (pp. 20 -21). LSE Global Policy Lab IGA. https://www.lse.ac.uk/iga/global-policy-lab/Defeating-COVID-19
ORCID ID 0000-0002-8530-6062
Key Expertise informal urbanism, urban inequality, spatial justice, housing justice, urban citizenship, displacement, coercive environmentalism, architectural pedagogy,
Apply Now