Purva is a SEED funded PhD Scholar at the University of Manchester.  Her research investigates the processes of negotiations and struggle through which the sanitation infrastructure is produced in Mumbai, India. She focuses on the complexities of technical infrastructure, everyday practices and policy landscapes of sanitation systems and how they change over time.

Her ethnographic research is motivated by two broad questions of (1) What are the overlaps and interconnections between formal and informal sanitation systems? (2) How can the production of infrastructure be understood through the study of these overlaps and interconnections?

Before commencing her PhD, Purva worked as a program coordinator for the ‘Transforming M East Ward Project’, an action research project of Tata Institute of Social Sciences that seeks to create a model of inclusive urban development in M East Ward, the poorest municipal ward in Mumbai. She was also is involved in teaching Urban Design at Dr D Y Patil College of Architecture and is deeply involved in the people's campaigns on Right to Water and the Development Plan of Mumbai 2014-2034. 

She is an Architect with a Master’s in Urban Design from Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture, Mumbai. 

Supervisors: Dr Deljana Iossifova, Dr Alison Browne and Dr Nate Millington