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Department of Geography

Nitin Bathla
Nitin Bathla, Dr.
Postdoc

Space, Nature and Society

Tel.: 044 63 55186
Room number: Y25 L 22
Presence times: Mon-Thu 09:00 - 17:00
nitin.bathla@geo.uzh.ch
Website

Bio

NITIN BATHLA is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geography at UZH and a lecturer in the Department of Architecture at ETH Zürich. His teaching and research focus on urban studies and political ecology, with particular attention to commoning, landscape restoration, labor, and infrastructure geography. His ongoing research involves a comparative analysis of Asian and European peripheral landscapes to explore the agrarian question in the context of climate change. As part of the Spotlight project at UZH, he will be investigating the political ecology of light pollution in Switzerland. Nitin's transdisciplinary and pluriversal research approaches actively combine academic inquiry with artistic practices such as filmmaking and socially engaged art. His 2020 ethnographic feature-length film, Not Just Roads, centered on India's ongoing highway program. The film premiered at several major film festivals and won the SAH Film Award in 2022, among other notable accolades.

Education

Dr. sc. ETH Zürich, Urban Studies (Distinction)

MAS Urban Design, ETH Zürich

Bachelor of Architecture, Institute of Enviornmental Design, Vallabh Vidyanagar, India

Current teaching

GEO299: Small Group Teaching

Books

Researching Otherwise: Pluriversal Methodologies for Landscape and Urban Studies, Nitin Bathla (ed.), 2024. gta Verlag, May 2024. https://doi.org/10.54872/gta/4692

Unearthing Traces, Denise Bertschi, Julien Lafontaine Carboni, Nitin Bathla (eds.), 2023. EPFL University Press. https://www.epflpress.org/produit/1428/9782889155507/unearthing-traces

The Seasonal Arrival City: Designing for migrants 'transient right to the city', Nitin Bathla & Jennifer Duyne (eds.), 2022. ETH Wohnforum ETH CASE

Journal Articles

Transhumance Urbanism as an Urban Otherwise: Inhabiting Agrarian Incompletion at the intersections of Extended Urbanisation-Extended Ruralisation, 2024. Antipode, 1-22, DOI: 10.1111/anti.13085

Extending dialogues on the urban, 2024. Dialogues in Human Geography, 1-6, DOI: 10.1177/20438206241242469

The atmospheres of massiveness: The politics and times of the maybe in Southern megaregions, 2024. The Geographical Journal, 1-10, DOI: 10.1111/geoj.12577

Nature and the extended city: Wasteland governmentality, the sacred, and anti-wasteland politics in the Aravalli region, 2023. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1-20, DOI: 10.1177/25148486231187811

The Highway Revolution. Enclosure and State Space in India. Extended Urbanisation. Tracing Planetary Struggles. Christian Schmid, Milica Topalović eds. Birkhäuser, 2023. 345-378. DOI: 10.1515/9783035623031-010

Inhabiting the extensions, 2023. Dialogues in Human Geography, 1-23, DOI: 10.1177/20438206231168896

Extended urbanisation and the politics of uncertainty: The contested pathways of highway corridors in India, 2022. The Geographical Journal, 1-15. DOI: 10.1111/geoj.12441

Planned illegality, permanent temporariness, and strategic philanthropy: tenement towns under extended urbanisation of postmetropolitan Delh, 2021. Housing Studies (6) 37, 868-888. DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2021.1992359

Reframing the contested city through ethnographic film: beyond the expository on housing and the urban, 2021. N Bathla, KE Papanicolaou. International Journal of Housing Policy (3) 22, 351-370. DOI: 10.1080/19491247.2021.1886028

Radical housing and socially-engaged art: Reflections from a tenement town in Delhi’s extensive urbanisation, 2020. N Bathla, S Garg. Radical Housing Journal, 35-54. DOI: 10.54825/HFEH7946

Decentring the Open City: Examining Openness at the Agrarian-urban Frontiers in India, 2020. Trialog (4) 135 - Open City, 15-19. Research Collection

The Metabolism of Tenement Towns on a Planet of Fast Fashion, 2019. OASE 104. The Urban Household of Metabolism, 50-55. DOI: 10.3929/ethz-b-000408394

Book Reveiws

Against the Commons. A Radical History of Urban Planning, 2024. Planning Theory, 1-6, DOI: 10.1177/14730952231212292

After suburbia: Urbanization in the twenty-first century, edited by Roger Keil and Fulong Wu, 2024. Journal for Urban Affairs, 1-3, DOI: 10.1080/07352166.2024.2343556

Lively Cities: A review in the minor key. Book review forum, 2024. Urban Geography 45 (3), 495-498, DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2024.2308417

Democracy beyond the state. How cities can transform democracy, 2024. City, 1-3, DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2024.2355804

The architecture of social reform: housing, tradition, and German modernism, 2023. Housing Studies Journal 38 (4), 744-746, DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2023.2200225

An Excursion into the Fragments of the City, Fragments of the City – The Making and Unmaking of Urban Worlds by Colin McFarlane, 2020. Society and Space. Link

AMO/Rem Koolhaas (ed.) 2020: Countryside: A Report. Cologne: Taschen, 2020. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 44 (5), 945-946, DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12960

Book review: Suburban Planet: Making the World Urban from the Outside In, 2019. Urban Studies 56 (10), 2179-2181, DOI: 10.1177/0042098019836051

Newspaper and Magazine Articles

This is not an academic conversation, 2023. Trans - Silence 43, 105-109.
DOI: 10.3929/ethz-b-000634051

Reparatur und Fix unterscheiden - Zu einer Ökologie des Wiederaufbaus, Jason W. Moore, Patel, Raj, Milica Topalović, Alex Nehmer, Nitin Bathla, 2023. Arch+ The Great Repair, 16 – 29. Link

Urban autopia: the architecture of car-oriented capitalism, 2022. Architectural Review – Energy, 84-87. Link

India’s highway revolution, 2022. Architectural Review – Transit, 88 – 91. Link

The Time of the “Maybe” in Massive Urbanization:
Reflections from a collective of Southern urban scholars
, 2021. Society & Space Forum. Link

By sealing Delhi NCR borders, Covid has ended fluidity between where laborers live and work. M Naik, N Bathla, 2021. The Print. Link

Housing the migrant worker, 2020. The Indian Express. Link

Complexities and Contradictions in Forensic Architecture: In conversation with Eyal Weizman. N Bathla, 2020. Trans Magazine. Spannung, 103-108. Link

The Delhi-Mumbai Expressway Is a Short-Cut to Socio-Ecological Disaster.
N Bathla, A Singh, 2019. The Wire. Link

Zomias of Reality. N Bathla, 2018. Trans - Reality 33, 103-108. Link

Research and Teaching Experience

Postdoctoral Researcher; Space, Nature and Society; University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland. 2024-present. Supervisor: Norman Backhaus, Professor, Department of Geography.

Lecturer and Senior Postdoctoral fellow in Urban Sociology,
and Coordinator of the Landscape and Urban Studies (LUS) Doctoral School;
Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich. 2021-present

Lecture and Scientific Assistant in Housing and Urban Studies; ETH Wohnforum – ETH CASE, Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich. 2018-2020

Studio Instructor & Lecturer; School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. 2018-2020

Research lead & Curator, Urban Age Award & Urban Age Conference, Delhi; LSE Cities & Alfred Herrhausen Society. 2013-2014      

Films and Video Installations

Agrarian Questions in an Uncertain World, 2023, 18 minutes. Video Installation

Not Just Roads, 2020, Ethnographic Film, 67 minutes. India/Switzerland. Producer, Director, Cinematographer, Sound www.notjustroadsfilm.com

The film premiered at over 30 international film festivals such as the London Architecture Festival, Copenhagen Architectural Festival, DocAviv 2021, Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam, and Dharmshala International Film Festival. The film won the Society of Architecture Historians Film Award and was nominated for several other jury awards. The film was screened in classrooms of several universities including Humboldt University, York University, Syracuse University, KTH Stockholm, and University of Luzern.

Metropolis 2020, 2020, 8 minutes. Video Installation, exhibited in Zurich, Berlin, and Delhi.

Podcasts

Book Review Roundtable – Waste and the City, Verso, with Colin McFarlane, Julia Wesley, and Vanesa Castan Broto, 2024, Urban Political Podcast.

Book Review Roundtable – Lively Cities with Maan Barua, Lindsay Howe, Ghazala Shahabuddin, Ravi Sundaram, and Thomas Crowley, 2024, Urban Political Podcast.

Book Review Roundtable – Against the Commons: A Radical History of Urban Planning with Sai Balakrishnan, Mara Ferreri, and Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago, 2023, Urban Political Podcast.

Book Review Roundtable – How Cities Can Transform Democracy with Roger Keil, Julie-Anne Boudreau, Ross Beveridge, and Philippe Koch, 2023, Urban Political Podcast.

Book Review Roundtable – Migrants and Machine Politics with Adam Auerbach, Sofie Heintz, and Nicolás Palacios Crisóstomo, 2023, Urban Political Podcast.

Book Review Roundtable – Art and Climate Change with Maja and Rueben Fowkes, Debjani Bhattacharya, and Tatjana Schneider, 2022, Urban Political Podcast.

Book Review Roundtable - Fragments of the City – The Making and Unmaking of Urban Worlds Colin McFarlane with Tatiana Thieme, Kevin Ward, and Theresa Enright, 2022, Urban Political Podcast.

Film-Making as Urban Research, with Sandra Jasper, and Tino Buchholz, 2021, Urban Political Podcast.

Mobilization and advocacy in contexts of massive urbanisation, AbdouMaliq Simone, Dian Tri Irawaty, Mariana Cavalcanti, Steve Ouma Akoth, Dr. Momen ElHusseiny, Kristian Saguin, Sobia Ahmad Kaker, and Taibat Lawanson, 2020, Urban Political Podcast.

Exhibitions

Planetary Urbanisation – Agrifutures Zürich, 2023. Zentrum Architektur Zürich (ZAZ), Switzerland

Does the blue sky lie? Testimonies of Air’s Toxicities, 2020, public art installation as a part India Art Fair, Delhi, India

Mapping Delhi - Arbeit, Stadtraum Und Erinnerung Auf Textil Urbane Räume: 4 Perspektiven, 2021. Zentrum Architektur Zürich (ZAZ), Switzerland

Peripheries & Crossovers: Art As Social Practice, 2021, Hamburg Haus, Germany

Minha Casa Nossa Cidade! (My House My City! ), 2013, Studio X, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships

Swiss National Science Foundation Publication Grant for the book “Researching Otherwise” + Network for City and Landscape (NSL) Grant. 2024

Network for City and Landscape (NSL) colloquium grant + Swiss National Science Foundation Conference Grant for organising the conference Planetary Urbanisation: Agendas for Research and Action. 2023

Swiss National Science Foundation Conference Grant for organising the annual conference of International Network for Urban Research. 2023

Swiss National Science Foundation Conference Grant for organising the first International Symposium on Film, Architecture, and Urban Studies, Zurich. 2022

Society of Architecture Historians Award for Film and Video. 2022

Swiss National Science Foundation Mobility Grant for a year-long stay at the George Simmel Zentrum, Humboldt University Berlin. 2020-2021

Does the Blue Sky Lie? Testimonies of Air’s Toxicities Art Grant. KHOJ International Artists Association. 2021

Swiss Excellence Scholarship for doctoral studies awarded by the Swiss Government. 2017-2020

Peripheries and Crossovers: Art as social Practice Art Grant, KHOJ International Artists Association. 2019-2020

Environmental Film Grant for the documentary film Not Just Roads, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung India Office. 2019-2021

UNLEASH fellow, Denmark for UN Sustainable Development Goals. 2017

Gaurav Chinha Award for outstanding achievements and contributions to
Sardar Patel University. 2009

Prof. Kurla Varkey forum fellow, CEPT University, Ahmedabad. 2009