Gautam Bhan

Gautam Bhan is an urbanist whose work focuses on urban poverty, inequality, social protection and housing. He is currently Associate Dean, IIHS School of Human Development, as well as Senior Lead, Academics & Research, at IIHS.

Gautam’s previous research has focused on evictions, citizenship and inequality in Delhi, and at IIHS, he continues to work on questions of access to affordable and adequate housing. He anchors IIHS’ role as a National Resource Centre with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India. He is also a part of IIHS’ work in affordable housing policy and practice, having worked with housing rights movements across the country as well as state governments in Karnataka, Delhi, Rajasthan and Odisha. His new work engages with regimes of urban welfare and social security, including work on urban health. At the School of Human Development, he is building research and practice on questions of the design and delivery of social protection entitlements within urban India. He also has a deep and abiding interest in new urban and planning theory from the South.

He is the author of In the Public’s Interest: Evictions, Citizenship and Inequality in Contemporary Delhi (University of Georgia Press, 2017; Orient BlackSwan, 2017), co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Planning in the Global South (Routledge, 2018; Orient BlackSwan, 2019), co-author of Swept off the Map: Surviving Eviction and Resettlement in Delhi (Yoda Press, 2008), and co-editor of Because I have a Voice: Queer Politics in India (Yoda Press, 2006), in addition to numerous academic articles. He also writes frequently in public intellectual spaces. He holds a PhD in urban studies and planning from the University of California, Berkeley.