Introducing... Dr Nian Paul

Nian Paul is an urban feminist geographer with expertise in public spaces, the geography of urban artistic interventions, socio-spatial justice, gendered geographies of work and leisure, and qualitative methodologies. She completed her PhD at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (India) on urban materialities and representational dynamics of public art practices in Delhi.

As an Urban Studies Foundation International Fellow, Dr Nian Paul will spend nine months at University College London (Institute of Advanced Studies). During the fellowship, she intends to work on publishing her doctoral research findings on the spatial implications of creativity-led urban transformation in Delhi, developing a comparative framework with reference to cities in the Global South. The intended research outputs will address how infusion of public art generates new ways of experiencing the city through everyday spaces, representations, contestations and negotiations that come into effect with the spatiality of institutionalised public art practices in cities of Global South. Besides focusing on writing, she will participate in various planned research dissemination activities, including a seminar on ‘Public Art for Whom?: Art and its Exclusionary Publics’.