Toronto to Hyderabad to Dublin: how I got there, and how I got here

Posted: November 12, 2025 | Author: naomiadiv | Filed under: Uncategorized |Leave a comment

This week, I am in Dublin, working out of the reading room of the National Library of Ireland which, itself, is a delight. These big, austere, quiet spaces blend the big fiction and the mundane work of academic life, and I cherish them.

I am here for an intensive writing collaboration, based in research on urban public spaces in Hyderabad, India that I completed in the past year with my colleague, Dr. Hari Sasikumar (who is a postdoc at Dublin City University (DCU), and also a photographer).

This week has me thinking about academic collaboration, but especially about gathering resources and connections in an academic life, storing them away, and putting them together when the time comes.

I am thinking about how what results is not a completed puzzle, but more like a treehouse made of scraps of wood and cardboard, decorated with tiles and paint. It is improvised, and imagined, and made of what you find. When it’s finally done – or done enough – if you are very lucky, you get to go up there with a snack and a blanket, and not come down for some time.

Presently, I’m in that treehouse: I’ll explain.

This story actually begins in the oft-forgetted days of the early pandemic. In 2021, I had gotten a University of Toronto Global Classrooms grant to bring international scholars into my virtual classroom for POL 402: Public Space, which was a seminar for a group of (excellent) fourth year students. The grant was to pay three scholars who were studying public spaces in different places around the world to come teach in my class. I was connected with them by Dr. Luisa Bravo, founder of City Space Architecture in Bologna, Italy (who, at that time, I had also never met in person), and who also runs the Public Space Academy.

Hari had just finished his PhD, and written his book on public life in Kerala, India – Social Spaces and the Public Sphere – and he came to talk about it in our virtual classroom. The teaching went extremely well, as had the planning that preceded it. In the way of knowing someone only virtually, we got along quite well, and we talked about staying in touch if another opportunity presented itself. Which it did, but not for a long time.

Three years later, in winter 2024, an opportunity came across my desk to apply for the University of Toronto School of Cities India Research Catalyst Travel Grant, funded by theUniversity of Toronto India Foundation (UTIF). Having been funded through the School of Cities before (especially in my work with Metropolitics), I was keen to apply, but I had never been to India and I needed some direction.

So I got back in touch with Hari, who suggested that we consider research working with Hyderabad Urban Labs (HUL), a nonprofit organization in his hometown of Hyderabad, that does local urban research and community development projects.

At the time, HUL was running a design competition around small public spaces in Hyderabad, called i’Local. In conversation with the organization’s director, Dr. Anant Maringanti, we decided to enter the contest; whether or not we got the U of T grant, we could begin a conversation with HUL, and then think about a future project. Although neither of us were designers, that entry packet was a great first pass at engaging with the big questions of public space that HUL has been asking for some time – in particular: how can the leftover spaces of the city be rethought to serve local communities?

Spoiler: we did not win the contest.

But, eventually, we did win the U of T grant, and I booked travel to India. After months of zoom calls and email conversations, Hari and I finally met in person in a hotel lobby in Hyderabad in February 2025. In a whirlwind ten days that followed, we visited many sites of the iLocal competition; were guided by Anant and other very generous members of the HUL team; and took piles of notes and photos.

I would return for another round of research in India in July 2025, this time on my own, for five days in Hyderabad, and another five in Mumbai, where I would meet members of the UTIF staff. I was also graciously taken around by wonderful colleagues at the School of Environment and Architecture (SEA). More meetings, more photos, more field notes, more incredibly enlightening conversations.

And while Hari and I kept meeting on the phone and over zoom, we are taking the opportunity of my being in Paris this year to meet up in person, and to write intensively together for a week. We sit and write in the big reading room; we get lunch and talk ideas; we read and write some more. This is an absolute gift of time, and an opportunity to break out of the isolation of so much of academic writing.

For me, in-person conversations enrich my academic work like no other. That is how I wrote my dissertation with the beloved PhD club; how I stay energized on urban issues through the board of Metropolitics; and how I would choose to work always. I am taking the opportunity of sabbatical to re-set this practice.

I tell this story because I think a lot of us see the final product of this or that academic project, and have no idea where to start building something similar. If the work involves collaboration, it may seem from afar that either you have to chase the biggest grants, or just luck out with making a good friend in grad school and then writing with them forever on your own dime. Those things, certainly, can happen, but they are only one way of engaging in great academic projects, among so many other kinds.

For this project, I took advantage of small grants as they came my way, wove in scholarship with teaching, and built relationships with people and institutions over time. This is not ‘networking,’ but rather a larger orientation to choosing connection over isolation, and to opt for presently available resources. I knew I wanted the treehouse, but I didn’t have plans drawn up at first, and I certainly didn’t know all the places it would take me.

I acknowledge that I am able to do this because I operate in a well-resourced institution with supportive colleagues. I also am always, always keeping an eye out for possibilities that will nourish my thinking and teaching and writing. This collaboration is the treehouse, and the path to the treehouse. It begins by gathering this piece, and that.

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