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

M.A : Städelschule Architecture Class, Frankfurt, Germany

Ph.D. University of Melbourne (Urban Studies)

Dr. Ishita Chatterjee

Associate Professor & Associate Dean of Research and Faculty Development

Email ishita.chatterjee@jgu.edu.in
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ORCID ID 0000-0002-9610-5354
Key Expertise informal urbanism, urban inequality, housing justice, spatial justice, environmental justice and architectural pedagogy

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

M.A : Städelschule Architecture Class, Frankfurt, Germany

Ph.D. University of Melbourne (Urban Studies)

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 and holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne. Her work focuses on informal urbanism, housing justice, spatial justice, environmental justice, ecological debt, and architectural pedagogy.

She co-authored the book Atlas of Informal Settlement: Understanding Self-Organized Urban Design and advocates for in-situ upgrading and land rights for residents of informal settlements. She has received international grants, including the 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, and the Urban Studies Foundation’s Seminar Series Award in 2025 for her project Epistemes of Non-Dominant Inhabitation: A Seminar Series for Early-Career and Under-Represented Scholars to Decentre Urban Knowledge.

She has been an active participant in social movements on housing rights in India. Her writing has been published in international academic journals and media platforms such as The Wire, Outlook, Scroll, The Leaflet, The Bastion, The Conversation, and LSE blogs, among others. She has also 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

Epistemes of non-dominant inhabitation: a seminar series for early-career and under-represented scholars to decentre urban knowledge, Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series Award, 2025

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

Chatterjee, I. (2025). Informal settlements: An entanglement of shifting landscapes, precarious geographies and contested territories. In Sengupta, U., & Nielsen, K. B. (Eds.), The Politics of Urban Land in South Asia Current Challenges and New Directions. Routledge. (pp.68-91) https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003530664

Chatterjee, I. (2025). Organizing During Forced Eviction in Khori Gaon. In Baker, R., & Ferrer, A. (Eds.), Dispatches from the Threshold: tenant Power in Times of Crisis. Fernwood Publishing.

Butcher, S., Shafique, T., Recio, R., and Chatterjee, I. (2025). Epistemic Justice and the University: Reclaiming the Academy for Emancipatory Urban Praxis. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.13303

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

Dovey, K., Pafka, E., Shafique, T., van Oostrum, M., & Chatterjee, I., (2023) Informal settlements are where cities are made. Pursuit.

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/

Chatterjee, I., & Shafique, T. (2021) Denial of the Ordinary. In Hislop, K., & Lewi, H., (Eds) Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand: 37, What If? What Next? Speculations on History’s Futures (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).

Chatterjee, I. (2020) How Mumbai’s poorest neighbourhood is battling to keep coronavirus at bay. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how-mumbais-poorest-neighbourhood-is-battling-to-keep-coronavirus-at-bay-137504

Chatterjee, I. (2020) In Mumbai’s Shivaji Nagar slum, an NGO is helping six lakh residents keep Covid-19 at bay. Scroll.in https://scroll.in/article/962562/in-mumbais-shivaji-nagar-slum-an-ngo-is-helping-six-lakh-residents-keep-covid-19-at-bay

Recio, R., Chatterjee, I., Lata, L.N., (2020) COVID-19 reveals unequal urban citizenship. LSE COVID-19 blogs. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/covid19/2020/06/05/covid-19-reveals-unequal-urban-citizenship-in-manila-dhaka-and-delhi/
Email ishita.chatterjee@jgu.edu.in
ORCID ID 0000-0002-9610-5354
Key Expertise informal urbanism, urban inequality, housing justice, spatial justice, environmental justice and architectural pedagogy