Biography
Sahil is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Geography. As an urban geographer with professional experience in city planning and architecture, his core research interests lie in understanding the uneven impact of digital technologies in an information age on spatial planning and land management processes in the majority urban world. Prior to joining UW-Madison, he completed his graduate studies from the University of Sheffield, U.K., and the School of Planning & Architecture (SPA) Delhi, India. Sahil has also worked as an urban planning practitioner-cum-researcher for eight years in India’s urban development sector across public, private, non-profit and international development organizations. He primarily contributed in roles that prioritized research, policymaking and capacity building around issues of equitable access to land, housing and decentralized governance in large and mid-sized cities of India. Informed by his diverse professional and academic exposure to Indian real estate and planning practices, his doctoral project aims to document the uneven impacts of planned peri-urbanization processes that are engendered at the conjuncture of (post)colonial, political-economic and digital epistemes that inform South Asia’s distinctly agrarian mode of urbanization. In this regard, Sahil is presently conducting dissertation fieldwork in peripheral villages located within India’s National Capital Territory of Delhi that are earmarked for future urban expansion. This research involves studying digitally mediated urbanization processes, including both formal policymaking and planning practices as well as informal residential and commercial property-making practices, that are collectively articulating the real estate-driven urban transformations, and attendant socio-spatial marginalization, unfolding at Delhi’s agrarian-urban frontier.