(Associate Researcher, April 2026 – Present)

(Visiting Doctoral fellow, September 2024 – July 2025)

Biography:

Khaliq Parkar is an Assistant Professor at the Human Sciences Research Centre at IIIT, Hyderabad.

His research focuses on the digitalization of urban governance in India. This includes the narratives of public policies around smart cities and data-driven governance, evaluating the adoption and creation of urban governance and citizens’ platforms, the process of digital infrastructuring, and the way data is collected, processed and used.

This research locates how epistemic communities contribute to urban policies and create digital platforms, understands how algorithms and data are changing bureaucratic practices, and evaluates how embedding digital infrastructures alters and transforms cities. Finally, this work also encompasses understanding citizens’ access to urban services, accountability initiatives and development of civic tech.

His upcoming research focuses on digital transitions and urbanization in Hyderabad and Telangana.

Khaliq earned a PhD in Geography from CESSMA, Université Paris Cité in 2025 for his thesis titled “The digitalization of urban governance in India: Platforms, processes and people in Bhubaneswar”.  His thesis research (supervised by Dr. Marie-Hélène Zérah) focused on the digitalization of urban governance in India under the Smart Cities Mission and National Urban Digital Mission. The thesis was supported by the IRD-ARTS program and the ‘Urban governance in India through the prism of the 100 Smart Cities Mission’ project funded by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD).

He has been awarded a fellowship at the Weizenbaum Institut (Berlin) and has taught at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts (Pune), NMIMS University (Mumbai) and St. Xavier’s College (Mumbai).

Recent Publications:

• Parkar, Khaliq. “Digital Legacies and Distressed Capacities: Evaluating Platforms of Spatial Governance in Bhubaneswar”. South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, No. 30 (2023).
• Parkar, Khaliq, Zerah, Marie-Helene and Mittal, Gaurav. “Platformisation, Infrastructuring, and Datafication: Regional Variations in the Digitalization of Indian Cities”. Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 57, No. 14, pp. 53-60 (2023).
• Parkar, Khaliq and Uttara Purandare. “Decoding Digitalization of Urban Governance in India: Policy, People and Processes of the Smart Cities Mission and National Urban Digital Mission”. Working Paper, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi (2023).
• Parkar, Khaliq. ‘Sustainability and people’s participation in the era of smart solutionism’, Question of Cities, (7 October 2022).
• Parkar, Khaliq.  ‘What is the future of digital infrastructure under the Smart Cities Mission?’, (with Gaurav Mittal), Money Control, (24 June 2022).