Institute of Development Studies

Biography

Lyla Mehta is a Research Fellow at IDS in the KNOTS team and an Adjunct Professor at Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences. She trained as a sociologist (University of Vienna) and has a Ph.d. in Development Studies (University of Sussex). Her work focuses on water and sanitation, forced migration and resistance, scarcity, rights and access and the politics of environment/ development and sustainability. She has extensive field research in rural India studying the politics of water scarcity and the linkages between gender, displacement and resistance. Additionally, she has worked on the right to water in South Africa and studied the cultural and institutional aspects of sanitation in Ethiopia, Bangladesh, India and Indonesia. Her work uses the case of water to explore conceptual and empirical questions concerning scarcity, power, politics, rights and access to resources, the contested nature of the ‘public' and ‘private' and the cultural politics of development. She is currently the water and sanitation domain convenor of the STEPS centre .

Lyla Mehta is also a member of the IDS Water Justice Programme

Selected Projects and Recent Work

• Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability (STEPS) Centre
• Science, Technology and Water Scarcity
• Going to Scale? The Potential of Community-Led Total Sanitation
• Sustainable Livelihoods in Southern Africa

Thematic Expertise

Climate Change; Development (General); Environment; Gender; Migration; Politics and Power; Rights; Science and Society; Security and Conflict; Water and Sanitation; Anthropology; Citizenship.

Geographic Expertise

South East Asia; Sub Saharan Africa; South Africa; Bangladesh; Ethiopia; India; Indonesia.

Selected Publications »»

• Mehta, L. and Movik, S. (2011) Shit Matters: The Potential of Community-Led Total Sanitation, Rugby: Practical Action Publishing
• Mehta, L. and Napier-Moore, R. (2011) 'Citizenship and Displacement', IDS Working Paper 354, Brighton: IDS
• Mehta, L., Thompson, L. and Nleya, N. (2010) 'Water Rights and State Management in India and South Africa' in Thompson, L. and Tapscott, C. (eds), Citizenship and Social Movements: Perspectives from the Global South, London: Zed Books
• Marshall, F., Waldman, L., MacGregor, H., Mehta, L. and Randhawa, P. (2009) 'On the Edge of Sustainability: Perspectives on Peri-urban Dynamics', STEPS Working Paper 35, Brighton: STEPS Centre
• Movik, S. and Mehta, L. (2009) 'Going with the Flow? Directions of Innovation in the Water and Sanitation Domain', STEPS Working Paper 29, Brighton: STEPS Centre
• Mehta, L. (2008) 'Over the Rainbow: The Politics of Researching Citizenship and Marginality', Action Research 6.2:233-253
• Mehta, L. (2008) Displaced by Development. Confronting Marginalisation and Gender Injustice, London: Sage
• Mehta, L. and Grabska, K. (2008) Forced Displacement: Why Rights Matter, London: Palgrave Macmillan
• Mehta, L. (2007) 'Whose scarcity? Whose property? The case of water in western India', Land Policy 24:654-663
• Mehta, L. (2007) 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow? The Politics and Dilemmas of Researching Citizenship and Marginality', IDS Working Paper 288, Brighton: IDS
• Mehta, L. (2005) The Politics and Poetics of Water: Naturalising Scarcity in Western India, Delhi: Orient Longman