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Dr Pratichi Chatterjee

Dr Pratichi Chatterjee

  • Position: Postdoctoral Researcher
  • Areas of expertise: Housing; planning; urban geography; geographies of dispossession; activism.
  • Email: P.Chatterjee@leeds.ac.uk
  • Website:

Profile

I am a researcher in urban geography, with interests in housing, redevelopment projects and infrastructure building. Drawing on theory from urban geography, critical legal studies and settler colonial studies, my work explores the drivers, justifications, and the social and environmental consequences of urbanisation processes, looking at the role of  ‘top-down’ processes, led by state and market actors, as well as the work of community-based organising in influencing city space.

Research interests

I currently work on a project funded by ESRC, Prefabs Sprouting: Modern Methods of Construction and the English Housing Crisis. The project brings together researchers in housing studies, sociology, geography, architecture and construction management. It aims to understand what kinds of homes and places MMC firms are building, and the role of MMC in addressing the housing crisis.

I have a strong interest in research on race and racial inequality. I have done work on this topic in a non-academic research context with the charity Crisis, setting up a project to understand how systemic inequalities shape people’s access to housing.

My PhD, based in Sydney, Australia, focussed on how planning law, property and settler-colonial land practices shaped two projects in the city, one of public housing redevelopment and the other of road construction. The work analysed people’s experiences of change and displacement, which were influenced by factors such as race, socio-economic status, and their different legal and ‘extra-legal’ relationships with the places they lived in. In particular, it looked at these experiences through the lens of time, where long drawn out construction, land acquisition and disempowering consultations negatively impact every-day life for extended periods.

Publications     

  • Chatterjee, P. 2023 [Fortcoming]. The inheritance and Repetition of Colonial Practices of Dispossesion. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 

  • Sisson, A., Wynne, L., Condie, J. & Chatterjee, P. 2022. Overcoming over- research: ethical and methodological reflections from Sydney’s ‘petri dish’. In G. Aiken & C. Button (Eds.), Over Researched Places. Routledge.

  • Chatterjee, P., Sisson, A., Condie, J., Wynne, L., Lewis, C., & Skipper, C. 2021. Documentary  and resistance: There Goes Our Neighbourhood, #WeLiveHere2017 and the Waterloo estate  redevelopment. International Journal of Housing Policy https://doi.org/10.1080/19491247.2020.1851636.
  • Urzedo, D. and Chatterjee, P. 2021. The Colonial Reproduction of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: Violence Against Indigenous Peoples for Land Development. Journal of Genocide    Research, 23: 2, pp. 302-324.
  • McGuirk, P., Dowling, R., & Chatterjee, P. 2021. Municipal statecraft for the smart city: retooling  the smart entrepreneurial city? Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0308518X211027905.
  • Chatterjee, P., Condie, J., Sisson, A., & Wynne, L. 2019. Imploding Activism: Challenges and Possibilities of Housing Scholar-Activism. Radical Housing Journal, 1:1, pp. 189-204. https://radicalhousingjournal.org/2019/imploding-activism/
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>

Professional memberships

  • Royal Geographical Society