Debapriya Chakrabarti

Dr Debapriya Chakrabarti is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Manchester. Her project, 'Infrastructural Precarity, Livelihoods and Politics', focuses on the role in infrastructure in (trans)forming practices of idol-making in Kumartuli, an inner-city neighbourhood of Kolkata (India). Before joining the University of Manchester, she was a Research Associate at Commonwealth Local Government Forum working with Cardiff University on understanding governance and livelihoods in South Asian borders. Her research expertise is in informal practices, livelihoods, the human-infrastructure interface and sustainable urban transitions, focusing on marginalised communities in the Global South.

Qi Liu is a doctoral student in Human Geography at The University of Manchester. Her PhD project focuses on how tourist practices and their interactions with hotel infrastructures escalate resource demand in a Chinese hot spring town. She is interested in applying social practice theories to understand the dynamics of sustainable consumption in tourism and everyday life in China, covering topics relating to energy and water demand, sustainable tourism, lifestyle mobility, and lived experiences of sustainability. She obtained a Mater degree from Renmin University of China (2017) and a Bachelor degree from Xiamen University (2015), both in Sociology.

Dongyang Mi is a President's Doctoral Researcher at the University of Manchester, where he is completing a PhD examining emerging and dynamic socio-material patterns of cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation across Bejing and Tianji. Mi is an architect, researcher and urban geographer based in the UK, China, and Australia. Before joining the University of Manchester, he was a Research Associate at the Institute of Healthy Cities (IHC) affiliated with Hunan University, China. Dongyang holds an MA degree from RCA (Royal College of Art, UK), BA and BEng from HUST (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China). 

Qiwei Peng is a doctoral student supported by CSC (China Scholarship Council) at The University of Manchester. Qiwei’s PhD project aims to provide a better understanding: how elevated roads as a kind of both physical and social infrastructure produce or coexist with the various socio-spatial assemblages. Before joining the University of Manchester, she worked as a researcher and volunteer to implement related design projects in Shanghai and Chongqing, China. Peng obtained a Master degree from The Manchester School of Architecture (2020) and a Bachelor degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China (2018).