Nihal Ranjit

Nihal Ranjit has over five years of experience as a researcher at the interface of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Nihal’s research expertise spans understanding experiences of long-term disaster recovery, assessing differential vulnerability to climate change, and barriers and enablers to climate change adaptation and migration, with a focus on the coastal states of India. More recently, he has been studying the state of heat adaptation in India and frameworks to assess the adequacy of interventions to meet the growing heat risk in urban India.

At IIHS, Nihal has been part of several research and practice projects including, the Population Council funded research project on climate change and migration; British Council funded project on Reimagining Urban Resilience and Urban Infrastructure Resilience in Higher Education; GCRF funded Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures project; British Academy funded Recovery with Dignity project; George Washington University and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded Disaster Resilience Leadership project; International Development Centre (IDRC) funded Climate Resilient Pathways in Semi-Arid Regions project; and the World Bank funded Review of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Coastal Disaster Risk Reduction Project.

Apart from research, Nihal has been involved in several teaching and training engagements. As part of the project on higher education and urban infrastructure resilience, he contributed to developing a curriculum on urban infrastructure resilience to be taught in higher education institutions in India and the UK. Nihal also contributed to the evaluation of the Fellowship Programme run by the Coalition of Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI). As part of the Urban Practitioner’s Programme at IIHS, he has trained government officials on topics such as disaster resilience and affordable housing. Nihal teaches courses on climate change and cities and has taught the Practica, a place-based learning module, as part of the Urban Fellows Programme at IIHS.