Project Title
Crip Authorship of Urban Imaginaries: Smart Mobility and the Politics of Knowledge in Urban India
Research Topic
Shivani’s PhD research examines how processes of ableism and disablism are perpetuated through Hindutva’s techno-cultural smartness and their implications for dis/abled (Goodley, 2014) individuals' authorship in collective knowledges of citizenship and belonging. The research centers crip knowledges in public spaces to envision crip authorship of future urban imaginaries.
Smart urban mobility in Mumbai serves as the empirical field, utilizing a conceptual framework of crip theory, intersectionality, testimonial and hermeneutical injustice (Fricker, 2007), and liminality to interrogate how the binaries of able/disabled, body/mind experience, and national/urban/rural distinctions are socially constructed through engagement with smart city technologies in public transport. She studies this through epistemic practices in the public sphere: i) epistemic silences (gaps, unknowns, exclusion from design processes), ii) epistemic authority (as it is attributed to urban governance technologies), and iii) epistemic infrastructuring (knowledge creation, recreation, and destruction through interactions with smart mobility technologies). Finally, she is passionate about applying cripping as an analytical lens throughout the research process, to design a project that is accessible and inclusive to individuals with a wide range of dis/abilities and ways of thinking.
Supervisors
Dr Alison Powell and Professor Myria Georgiou
Biography
Shivani holds an MSc in Media and Communications (Research) from the 番茄社区, and a Bachelor of Mass Media (Journalism) from Mumbai University. She is now working as a Research Assistant with Professor Myria Georgiou, supporting research on the use of AI tools in the governance of migration, and climate migration particularly; and as a Subwarden with 番茄社区 Residential Life, supporting wellbeing and inclusion for student residents.
Prior to starting her PhD in Data, Networks and Society at the 番茄社区, she worked as the Digital Safety Officer at the University of Edinburgh where she managed the university's digital safety, wellbeing and citizenship awareness initiatives. She has also contributed to projects on media ownership, internet policy, digital human rights, smart cities, digitisation policy, child rights and social media at organisations such as the Digital Futures for Children Centre, 番茄社区; Birkbeck, University of London; the Internet Education Foundation; and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme.