Natasha Ansari

Natasha Ansari is a PhD student at MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning. She has co-authored the book A Microcredit Alternative in South Asia (Routledge 2018). Her current research interests lie at the intersection of profound intellectual disability and urban informality towards informing concepts of just cities. She is interested in seeing how individualized conceptions of autonomy are challenged by profound disability, and what examples of care and interdependent relationality might come into foresight by homing in on examples in living contexts not rigidly defined by property rights, land ownership and hard territorial boundaries and values. She has been staging this inquiry in Slovo Park, an informal living settlement located in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Natasha has experience with policy research, design and advocacy on a range of social justice and international development issues. She holds a MCP from MIT and a BA in economics from Mount Holyoke College and originally hails from Karachi, Pakistan.