Institutional Hybridity + Disaster Response: Jharkhand State Control Room

Dissertation in progress.

During the COVID-19-induced nationwide lockdown in India, millions of migrant workers were forced to leave their places of work and find their way back to their native towns and villages. It is estimated that almost twenty million workers were reduced to extreme desperation. The State Government of Jharkhand, civil society organizations, and indigenous communities responded to this dual crisis by forming a hybrid institution called the Jharkhand State Control Room (JSCR). Through participant observation, surveys, semi-structured interviews, and secondary data analysis, this project seeks to generate grounded theory on hybrid institutions and asks: How can hybrid institutions leverage networks, technology, and resources to address and manage disasters and plan effectively in the face of difference? This project will contribute to the emerging procedural planning literature on planning pluralism, institutional hybridity, and indigenous planning.

Anti-Eviction Initiatives During the Pandemic: A procedural analysis of the COVID Emergency Rental Assistance (CERA) Program in Detroit, Michigan

Role: Co-Principal Investigator, primary author

A collaborative project with United Community Housing Coalition (UCHC) examined the processes created to counter the impact of the pandemic on the renter population under the threat of eviction. This included mapping the iterative processes created to implement the CERA funding in Detroit, understanding the change in the legal landscape, and exploring the effects of this process on tenants and housing providers. It also looked at the priority process created by local organizations to create a safety net for the renters in court with an eviction judgment.