Karthik Rao-Cavale is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Social Sciences. He received his doctoral training from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, and has obtained prior degrees from Rutgers University and IIT Madras. His research interests lie in regional political economy, historical geography, economic development, socio-legal studies, and critical realism. He is currently working on a social history of regional road networks, regimes of circulation, and rural development in southern India (1915 - 1965).

Ongoing research projects:

1. Histories of infrastructure and local government finance in southern India
2. Using village restudies to study rural social transformation
3. Histories of Indian economics (with special reference to the village studies tradition)

1. Essay on planning historiography
2. Critical engagements with Marxist and postcolonial urban theory

1. Worker skilling, manufacturing innovation, and regional economic development
2. Affordable housing and rental markets

Articles in Journals and Edited Volumes:

• Rao-Cavale, K. (2019). The Art of Buying Time: Street Vendor Politics and Judicial Governance in Metropolitan India, in Rosenberg, G. N., Krishnaswamy, S., and Bail, S. (ed.) A Qualified Hope: The Indian Supreme Court and Progressive Social Change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Rao-Cavale, K. (2017). Patrick Geddes in India: Anti-colonial nationalism and the historical time of ’Cities in Evolution’. Landscape and Urban Planning, 166, 71-81.
• Rao-Cavale, K. (2016). Introduction: New Approaches to Law and Planning. Projections: The MIT Journal of Urban Planning, Vol. 12.
• Hanson, C. S., Noland, R. B., and Rao-Cavale, K. (2012). Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of materials used in road construction. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2287(1), 174-181.

• Rao-Cavale, K. (2018). A Casualised Ethnography of the Jamshedpur Working Class. Economic & Political Weekly, 53(11), 33-35.
• Rao-Cavale (2017). D. Asher Ghertner: Rule by aesthetics: world-class city making in Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2015. Decision: Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, 44(2).

• New Approaches to Law and Planning. Projections: The MIT Journal of Urban Planning, Vol. 12.

• HST101: Ahmedabad as a Gateway to the World (co-taught with Aparajith Ramnath and Darshini Mahadevia)
• SPS253/ECO542: Urban and Economic Geography
• ECO505: Indian Economic Development