about
Ananya Roy is Professor of City and Regional Planning and Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice at the University of California, Berkeley. She previously held the Friesen Chair in Urban Studies. Roy teaches in the fields of urban studies and international development. She also serves as Education Director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies. From 2009 to 2012 she served as co-director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Center and from 2005 to 2009 she served as Associate Dean of International and Area Studies.
Roy holds a B.A. (1992) in Comparative Urban Studies from Mills College, a M.C.P. (1994) and a Ph.D. (1999) from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley. She is the author of City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), co-editor of Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America (Lexington Books, 2004) and co-editor of The Practice of International Health (Oxford University Press, 2008). Her book, Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development (Routledge, 2010), was made possible through research supported by the National Science Foundation. This book is the recipient of the 2011 Paul Davidoff Book Award of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, a book award for research that advances social justice. Roy has recently completed an edited book (with Aihwa Ong) titled Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global (Blackwell, 2011).
Roy teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses and supervises doctoral students in departments ranging from City and Regional Planning to Geography to Education. In 2006, Roy was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest teaching honor UC Berkeley bestows on its faculty. Also in 2006, Roy was awarded the Distinguished Faculty Mentors award, a recognition bestowed by the Graduate Assembly of the University of California at Berkeley. In 2008, Roy was the recipient of the Golden Apple Teaching award, the only teaching award given by the student body. She was the 2009 California Professor of the Year by CASE/ Carnegie Foundation. Most recently, Roy received the 2011 Excellence in Achivement Award of the California Alumni Association, a lifetime achievement recognition.
Roy is currently involved in three collaborative projects of research and practice: Urban Revolutions in the Age of Global Urbanism (with Eric Sheppard, Helga Leitner, Vinay Gidwani, Michael Goldman, Anant Maringanti, and Jo Santoso); The 21st Century Indian City: Setting New Agendas for Policy (with Raka Ray, Pranab Bardhan, and Ashok Bardhan); and Territories of Poverty: Rethinking Poverty Scholarship (with Emma Shaw Crane). She also serves on the editorial boards of Public Culture, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (and the Studies in Urban and Social Change book series), Planning Theory, Planning Theory and Practice, and the forthcoming Territory, Politics, and Governance.