Malini Ranganathan is a post-doctoral research associate in the new Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy strategic initiative. She has a PhD from the Energy and Resources Group (ERG) at the University of California, Berkeley with a Designated Emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies. Her dissertation, drawing extensively upon theoretical and methodological strands in human geography, investigated the political ecology of water in peripheral Bangalore—a rapidly urbanizing city in southern India. In particular, she focused on how practices of collective action among informalized and marginalized populations at the urban fringe encounter and renegotiate the implementation of market-oriented water policies.
Dr Ranganathan’s doctoral work garnered an American Institute of Indian Studies fellowship, a National Science Foundation doctoral grant, a Chancellor’s Dissertation-Year fellowship, and a Simpson fellowship in International and Comparative Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She was formerly with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi and has consulted with United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change secretariat on climate change policy and technology transfer to developing countries.