Chenab Navalkha

Chenab Navalkha is a PhD student in Urban Planning at DUSP. She studies the political economy of housing, with a focus on how residents and tenant organizers negotiate and contest shifts in state- and market-led provision of housing. Part of her work also focuses on understanding how emerging digital real estate technologies mediate the landlord-tenant relationship, facilitate global flows of housing investment, and affect the experience of residents facing displacement. In addition, she studies how housing justice organizers shift their strategies in response to new technologies and changing patterns of real estate investment and practice. Chenab takes a multidisciplinary approach, drawing from scholarship in political economy, urban planning, geography, and history, with particular attention to local context and histories of racism and racialization in access to urban space and housing.

Before coming to MIT, Chenab worked as an urban health researcher and patient educator at the University of Chicago. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Philosophy from University of Chicago and a Master in City Planning from MIT.