Ayona Datta

My broad research interests are in postcolonial urbanism, smart cities, gender citizenship and regional futures. My research is set in the ethos of co-production with grassroots communities using digital/mapping, visual and participatory research methods to develop and build gendered capacity in the digital and urban margins. In the last 5 years, I have received over £3m in funding from European Research Council (Advanced Grant), AHRC, ESRC, British Academy and Swiss National Science Foundation to pursue groundbreaking research on digital urban transformations in the global south and their impacts on everyday social, material and gendered geographies. I have been the frontline Editor of Urban Geography since 2017 and am on editorial boards of several journals: Antipode, Dialogues in Human Geography, Digital Geography and Society, EPD: Society and Space and Territory, Politics and Governance. I was also a sub-panel member in the UK Research Excellence Framework 2021 (REF) representing Geography as Unit of Assessment. I received the Busk Medal from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in 2019.

More about Professor Datta

I have a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture (Delhi) and an MPhil in Environmental Design (Cantab) funded by the Overseas Development Administration (ODA) and Cambridge Commonwealth Scholarship. I practised as an architect in New Delhi for a year and as an RIBA chartered architect in London for three years, after which I left professional practice to pursue a PhD.

I worked on my PhD in Environmental Design and Planning at Arizona State University (ASU) from 2000-2003. I was placed on the Dean's list (GPA 4.0) and awarded the King Medal from the Architectural Research Centers Consortium upon graduation. During my time at ASU, I worked as a Graduate Research Associate in the Center for Architecture and Environmental Design.

This was followed by Lectureships in the Department of Architecture at Queen’s University Belfast (2003-2005), the Cities Programme in London School of Economics (2005-2012) and a Senior Lectureship in the Department of Geography, University of Leeds (2012-2016). I moved to King’s College London as a Reader (subsequently Professor) in Urban Futures in 2016. While at King’s, I was Chair of the Urban Futures research domain and Convenor of the MA/MSc Sustainable Cities degree programme. I joined UCL as Professor of Human Geography in September 2019.

I am the author of ‘The Illegal City: Space, law and gender in a Delhi Squatter Settlement’ (2012 Ashgate), co-editor of ‘Mega-urbanization in the Global South: Fast Cities and New Urban Utopias of the Postcolonial State’ (2017 Routledge) and ‘Translocal Geographies: Spaces, places, connections’ (2011 Ashgate). For my contributions to understanding smart cities, I received the Busk Medal from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in 2019.

I follow a strong ethos of co-production with societal partners shaping several public-facing outputs such as films, exhibitions, podcasts and a rap song. I have a strong media presence, engaging through regular blogs, podcasts and op-eds in the ConversationUK, Guardian and openDemocracy. I am regularly invited to international lectures and keynotes including invitations to speak at several themed UN meetings in Geneva and New York.

Teaching

I teach on the following modules:

Undergraduate

Digital Geographies (GEOG0164, Convenor)
Thinking Geographically I (GEOG0151)
Thinking Geographically II (GEOG0012)
Development Geography (GEOG0024)
Geographies of Infrastructure (GEOG0065)

Postgraduate

Cities, Space and Power (GEOG0136)
Urban Imaginations (GEOG0137)

Publications

To view Professor Datta's publications, please visit UCL Profiles:

Publications

Research Interests

Crosscutting themes of my research are:

Regional Futures: In 2020, I was awarded the EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL (ERC) ADVANCED GRANT to initiate a new five-year research project on the dynamics of digitalisation-as-urbanisation in the global south. This project will conduct the first comprehensive South-South investigation of the transition to automated planning processes in metropolitan regions, and its impacts on regional urbanisation.
Smart Cities and Digital Urbanism: I am known internationally for pioneering theoretical and empirical work on India’s smart cities and the ‘digital turn’ in urban studies. This has attracted ESRC NEWTON funds (PI) titled ‘Learning from Small Cities’, AHRC GCRF funds (PI) titled ‘Learning from the Utopian City’, BRITISH ACADEMY GCRF funds titled 'Digitising the Periphery: Co-Producing a Toolkit for Digital Democracy and Inclusive Urbanisation' and SNSF funded (CoI) titled 'Smart Cities: Provincializing the global urban age in India and South Africa'.
Feminist Urban Futures: I have received international recognition as one of the few scholars working on feminist urban futures in the global south pioneering an original research agenda linking digital geographies, urban infrastructures and Violence Against Women (VAW). This has attracted BRITISH ACADEMY GCRF funding (PI) titled ‘Disconnected Infrastructures and VAW’ and AHRC GCRF NETWORK GRANT (PI) titled ‘Gendering the Smart City’. This work has used creative practices and co-production (of films, hip-hop music videos, exhibitions and Storymaps) as a tool for the empowerment of marginal social actors and has also transformed the work of NGOs and activists in India.

Impact

My work has high translatability into policy/industry and public/lay knowledge and has gained international recognition through invited presentations in the United Nations headquarters in Geneva and New York. I have garnered a major impact by building and consolidating international research networks across stakeholders in global policy, third sector, creative industries and grassroots organisations, delivering cutting-edge scholarship and impactful research towards fulfilling SDGs #5 (gender equality) and #11 (sustainable cities and communities).

A key impact of my work has been in the curation and co-production of knowledge through long-term involvement with participants in low-income settlements and partnerships with NGOs and grassroots organisations in the global south. My work has transformed marginal lives and the methods of NGO partners by including gendered local knowledge within digital platforms and data commons from which they are usually excluded. In 2018, I co-produced a hip-hop music video (called ‘Khadar Girls’) with research participants, which was reported in all major national newspapers.

YouTube Widget Placeholderhttps://youtu.be/7d6awx1E1J8

I co-curated this work into an exhibition titled #AanaJaana [#ComingGoing] in Delhi’s Mandi House Metro station throughout January 2019, which was developed later into an online story map. Its research method ‘WhatsApp diaries’ has informed NGO practices in building the digital capacities of youth. The song and exhibition were used by a national news channel to produce a film for the 2019 Delhi election agenda around gender safety in public spaces and a gender-sensitive Delhi masterplan.

YouTube Widget Placeholderhttps://youtu.be/wdLe-N8DvPQ

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been working with sound artists and women in low-income neighbourhoods in Delhi to facilitate online podcast training workshops leading to the production of 4 Community Podcasts written and recorded by these women. I have also worked with animation artists to produce an animation video highlighting the struggles faced by marginal communities in India during the crisis.

YouTube Widget Placeholderhttps://youtu.be/EGkEL1atdhc

Invited presentations at the United Nations

Nov 2021 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Inter-sessional Panel on 'Sustainable urban development in the post #COVID19 world' 17-19 November 2021 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Dec 2020 Virtual forum on “Digital Transformation of Cities and Communities, UN-Habitat and ITU, Geneva.
Feb 2020 UN-Habitat World Urban Forum 10 plenary panel on 'Frontier Technologies', Abu Dhabi.
May 2018 Plenary Speaker in the UN ECOSOC Integration section in New York.
May 2016 Plenary Speaker at the UNCTAD CSTD 19 annual meeting in Geneva.

In 2016, I was cited in the UN World Cities Report and my Conversation article was an agenda contributor to the World Economic Forum. My research has been documented several times in the national and international media (newspapers and radio), including BBC Radio, Guardian, South China Morning Post, Economic Times, Hindustan Times, and mentions in LA Times, Reuters, Times of India, FirstPost, Quint, Dainik Jagran, and Times Higher Education.

Recent and upcoming keynote

2022

MPRI Special Talk Series: The State of Cities - #CityConversations
ICT4S Conference, Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

2021

Geoforum Annual Lecture at the RGS-IBG annual meeting in London, 1-3 Sept 2021. Title: ‘Thick time’: Experiments with feminist urban futures
RC21 ‘Sensing the City’ Plenary in Antwerp, Belgium, 14-16 July 2021. Title: Regional Futures: the politics of digitalisation as urbanisation in the global south.
Media Architecture Biennale. Title: Regional Futures: the politics of digitalisation as urbanisation in the global south.
RSA Network on Infrastructural Regionalism (NOIR) Conference. Title: Distant times: Excavating the future smart city in Simla municipal record room
RSA Regions in Recovery plenary speaker.
EURA 2021 Conference, Oslo [Virtual] Title: ‘Decolonising urban Futures: Reclaiming Shimla from ‘Below Cart Road’
TISS School of Public Policy and Governance, 4th International Graduate Seminar on "Quality of life in informal settlements”.
Bartlett International Lecture Series. Title: Distance

2020

Futurium Plenary, Berlin Future Institute
Artepolis-8 International conference, Bandung, Indonesia
UN-Habitat World Urban Forum 10 in Abu Dhabi, 8-13 February

2019

Finisterra Annual Lecture in Lisbon
Centre for BOLD Cities, Rotterdam
‘Aesthetics of Gentrification’ Conference, Portland OR
European Public Policy Conference, Madrid
Digital | Visual | Cultural workshop at the University of Oxford

2018

Sociological Review Journal conference, Newcastle
50th Irish Geographers’ Annual Meeting, Maynooth, Ireland

2017

AHRC Conference ‘Whose right to the smart city’ at the University of Plymouth
Association for Literary Urban Studies Conference, University of Tampere, Finland
“Smart and Green Cities, for whom?" conference at the University of Oslo.

Recent Op-eds

Datta, A. (2021) Fast Urbanism: Between Speed, Time and Urban Futures, Transient Cities Blog. DOI: 10.34834/2019.0017
Datta, A. (2021) Gendering COVID19 in India. Geography Directions Blog.
Datta, A. (2020) Survival infrastructures under COVID-19 in India. Geography Directions Blog.
Datta, A (Sept 2019) Why Smart City projects may not be enough to hold back Jalandhar’s youth. Citizen Matters.
Datta, A (March 2019) ‘Khadar ki Ladkiyan’: A hip hop music video co-produced with young women in Delhi’s urban peripheries. Guftugu: Indian Writers’ Collective, Vol. 3
Datta, A (1 February 2019) Indian women from the outskirts of Delhi are taking selfies to claim their right to the city. The Conversation UK.[Republished in Scroll.In, Quartz, Firstpost]
Datta, A, Ahmed, N. and Tripathi, R. (26 Oct 2018) #MeToo has arrived in India, and it’s changing how technology is used to fight injustice. The Conversation UK. [Republished in Scroll.In, Quartz]
Datta, A (9 June 2016) Three big challenges for smart cities and how to solve them. The Conversation.
Datta, A (27 January 2016) Will India’s experiment with smart cities tackle poverty or make it worse? The Conversation. [Republished in Scroll.In, Quartz]

Recent Films/Exhibitions/Podcasts

Nov 2021 Curated public exhibition in the Building Centre, London. Titled: ‘Learning from Small Cities’, 12 November to 10 December 2021. Funded by ESRC-Newton.
Dec 2019 Curated public exhibition in collaboration with Safetipin in Khoj Studios, New Delhi. Title: 'Disconnected Infrastructures and Violence Against Women', funded by British Academy.
8 March 2019 Podcast interview on ‘Smart Cities’ produced by Royal Geographical Society (RGS-IBG) #AsktheGeographer
March 2019 AHRC (PI) funded and co-produced ‘Khadar ki Ladkiyan’ music video was curated inside a bioscope and showcased in the 2019 International Association of Women in Radio & Television (IAWRT) Film Festival in Delhi from 5-7 March 2019, Delhi.
January 2019 Co-produced ‘Khadar ki Ladkiyan’ 3 min hip-hop music video with participants in Madanpur Khadar. YouTube [10k + views in July 2019]

YouTube Widget Placeholderhttps://youtu.be/7d6awx1E1J8

January 2019 Curated #AanaJaana [#ComingGoing] exhibition in Delhi’s Mandi House Metro station as part of their ‘Art in the Metro’ initiative.
March 2017 In conversation with Mathew Gandy and Simon Marvin on ‘Habitat and Living in Plural Cities’ British Academy film

YouTube Widget Placeholderhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IK7ndXv4RM

March 2017 Curated Museum of London exhibition on ‘City Now, City Futures’.
2013 ‘City Bypassed’ and ‘City Forgotten’ – two films that depict different faces of development urbanization and communal politics in Maharashtra.

Research Students

Postdoctoral researchers

The following postdoctoral researchers currently, or have recently, worked with me:

Nabeela Ahmed
Tom Cowan
Sheema Fatima
Philip Nicholson
Srilata Sircar

Research Grants, Scholarships and Awards

2022-2026: European Research Council Advanced Grant (PI ref: 101019318). Title: Regional Futures: The Territorial Politics of digitalisation-as-urbanisation in the global south. Amount: €2,499,862 ~ £2,163,497
2021-2023: British Academy GCRF Tackling Global Challenges (PI ref: TGC\200118). Title: Digitising the periphery: Co-producing a toolkit for digital democracy and inclusive urbanisation. Amount: £49,967.
2018-2021: ESRC-ICSSR Urban Transformations in India (PI ref: ES/R006857/1). Title: Learning from small cities: Governing imagined futures and the dynamics of change in India's smart urban age. Amount: £464,339 fEC.
2018-2021: AHRC network grant (PI ref: AH/R003866/1) titled ‘Gendering the smart city: A subaltern curation network on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in India’ fEC 59,720.
2018-2021: Swiss National Science Foundation Money follows the co-operation line (CoI ref: 10001AM_173332/1). Title: Smart cities: ‘Provincialising’ the global urban age in India and South Africa. Amount: fEC 624,000CHF ~ £553,000 fEC.
2017-2019: British Academy GCRF ‘Cities and Infrastructure’ Programme. (PI ref: CI170047). Title: ‘Disconnected infrastructures and Violence Against Women (VAW): Innovating digital technologies in low-income neighbourhoods to produce safer Indian cities’. Amount: fEC £280,798.
2018: British Academy Visiting Fellowship award (ref. VF1\102424) to Prof. Sanjay Srivastava to work collaboratively with Dr Datta on a project titled, ‘Urban Futures: Satellite Mapping, Big Data and the Politics of Space at the Margins of the Indian City’. Amount, £32,595.
2016-2017: AHRC development grant (PI ref: AH/N007395/1) titled ‘Learning from the Utopian City: An International Network on alternative histories of India's urban futures’. Amount: £39,682 (fEC)