Anwesha Aditi is an international researcher, originally from India and currently based in Italy. She is a researcher at IRPPS-CNR where she is part of the ERC-funded project “Illicit Labour: Unveiling the Dark Sides of the Global Photovoltaic Industry“, under the scientific supervision of Dr. Carlo Inverardi-Ferri. Her ongoing research critically examines the intersection of economic geography, political ecology, and energy transitions, with a particular focus on informal economies, labor precarity, and the socio-environmental implications of the Indian solar photovoltaic industry. She is also pursuing her doctoral studies at the Department of Methods and Models for Economics, Territory, and Finance (MEMOTEF) at Sapienza University of Rome. Since January 2026, she has been a visiting PhD researcher at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, UK, under the supervision of Dr. Maan Barua.

Anwesha’s academic trajectory reflects her interdisciplinary interests in urban planning, environmental studies, and economic geography. She holds a Master’s in Urban Planning from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, and a Bachelor’s in Planning from the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal. Her research experience is marked by collaborations with prestigious institutions, including the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and University College London. She actively contributed to the SNSF-funded project titled “Smart Cities: ‘Provincializing’ the Global Urban Age in India and South Africa,” conducted jointly by the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and University College London, UK, under the supervision of Prof. Ola Söderström and Prof. Ayona Datta to investigate how the global discourse on smart cities has been ‘provincialized’ in India through fieldwork, ethnography, and systematic studies. Continuing along similar lines, she became part of the ESRC-ICSSR-funded project titled “Learning from Small Cities: Governing Imagined Futures in India’s Smart Urban Age” under the supervision of Prof. Ayona Datta to understand the ethics of how urban authorities translate state imaginations of smart urban futures into ‘existing’ smart cities, how ordinary citizens live with the dynamics of these changes, how they reinterpret ‘smart’ from below, and how this combined knowledge can be mobilized toward more sustainable smart urban futures in the Indian cities of Shimla, Jalandhar, and Nashik.

In her previous role as a consultant at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India, she provided strategic support and expertise in policy design, narrative building, and stakeholder engagement for various national programs and initiatives. Her work has also explored urban sustainability, climate governance, and land governance in India, Bangladesh, and the UK. Her academic work has been presented at international conferences, and she is a co-author of publications in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Urban Geography and Environment and Urbanization ASIA (SAGE Journals), contributing to broader discussions on postcolonial urbanism, smart cities, and the digitalization of ‘living heritage’.

She is particularly interested in exploring how the renewable energy sector interacts with informal labor networks and how these hidden economies shape the governance of renewable energy transitions in the Global South. Through her research, she aims to inform critical discussions on renewable energy transitions, illicit labor economies, and solar photovoltaic waste management.

• ORCID: 0000-0002-0047-1975
• Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anwesha-Aditi?ev=hdr_xprf
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