Property & Citizenship
My ongoing book project looks at what the United Nations has famously called the “challenge of slums” for urban governments. However, I approach the challenge, which will increasingly mark global cities in the 21st century, from the perspective of slum-dwellers themselves to ask: how do marginalized urban residents negotiate political concessions from the very same political and democratic institutions that obstruct their access to full citizenship? Further, what does the persistence of slum spaces, despite decades of slum clearance or upgradation, say about the distribution of socio-economic rights in the city? I answer these questions by focusing on the citizenship of slum-dwellers through the lens of their property claims.
Publications
Journal Articles
Jonnalagadda, Indivar. 2023. “Waiting for Dignity Housing: Cruel governance and unaccounted time in Hyderabad.” Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 41 (1).
Jonnalagadda, Indivar. “Of Political Entrepreneurs: Assembling Community and Social Capital in Hyderabad’s Informal Settlements.” Urban Studies, Online First (2021), https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980211014120.
Jonnalagadda, Indivar, Ryan Stock, and Karan Misquitta. “Titling as a Contested Process: Conditional Land Rights and Subaltern Citizenship in South India.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 45, no. 3 (2021): 458–76.
Jonnalagadda, Indivar. “Citizenship as a Communicative Effect.” Signs and Society 6, no. 3 (2018): 531–57.
Online Posts
Jonnalagadda, Indivar. “I’m not there – A Hyderabad / Philadelphia Parallax,” Ethnographic Marginalia, September 7, 2021,
K., Manav, and Indivar Jonnalagadda. “Affordable Rental Housing Complexes for Urban Migrants: Problems and Prospects,” India in Transition, March 1, 2021, https://casi.sas.upenn.edu/iit/manavk-indivarjonnalagadda.
Minhaz, Ayesha, and Indivar Jonnalagadda, “Urban Local Bodies are critical in the fight against COVID-19.” Hyderabad Urban Lab Blog, March 30, 2020, https://hydlab.in/blogposts/strengthen-urban-local-bodies.
Grants & Awards
College of Arts & Sciences Research Grant, Miami University (2024)
Thomas Zwicker Memorial Fund Award, University of Pennsylvania (2023)
Graduate Fellowship, The Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy (2021-2022)
Mellon Graduate Student Research Award, Penn Humanities+Urbanism+Design Initiative (2021)
Dissertation Research Grant, The Wenner-Gren Foundation (2020-2021)
Joseph W. Elder Social Sciences Fellowship, American Institute of Indian Studies (2019-2020)
Geo L. Harrison Graduate Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania (2018-2019)
Summer Field Research Grant, Penn Department of Anthropology (2017 & 2018)