Khaliq Parkar


Assistant Professor
Ph.D (Université Paris Cité, France)
Research Areas: Urban Studies; Smart Cities; Public Policies of Digitalisation; Digital Infrastructures; Practices of Digitalisation in Governance; Government Data
Email: khaliq.parkar@iiit.ac.in

I was trained in Political Science at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and in Development Geography at the Université Paris Cité. My doctoral work focused on the policy and implementation of Smart Cities in India and was funded by the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development and the Agence Française de Développement. I was also hosted as an Open Fellow at the Weizenbaum Institut in Berlin.

My current and future research explores and evaluates policies and practices around digital technology and governance. There are three focal points of this research – (i) public policies of digitalization (ii) design and installation of digital infrastructures such as platforms, sensors, networks, and databases (iii) the use and practices of digital tools and data by government agencies, bureaucracies and citizens.

Some of my work has been published in the Economic & Political Weekly, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, and by the Centre for Policy Research. I also enjoy writing opinion pieces for the popular press, some of this work has been published in The Indian Express, Scroll, and Money Control.

Before joining IIIT, I taught in Liberal Arts programs at Symbiosis University (Pune) and NMIMS University (Mumbai). I also taught at St. Xavier’s College (Mumbai) and Wilson College (Mumbai) and regularly engaged classes as visiting faculty at the Department of Civics and Politics, University of Mumbai. I had the opportunity to work as a consultant with the UN Population Fund and the Centre for Policy Research (New Delhi).

Research Supervision

I look forward to working and collaborating with students and researchers interested in working on urbanization, public policies and programs on digitalization, and the politics and practices around data. I am particularly keen on projects that can combine research methods between computer science and social sciences.

Select Publications

  • [Article] Parkar, Khaliq. “Digital Legacies and Distressed Capacities: Evaluating Platforms of Spatial Governance in Bhubaneswar”. South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, No. 30 (2023).
  • [Article] 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).
  • [Article] 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).
  • [Online] ‘Sustainability and people’s participation in the era of smart solutionism’, Question of Cities, (7 October 2022).
  • [Online] ‘What is the future of digital infrastructure under the Smart Cities Mission?’, (with Gaurav Mittal), Money Control, (24 June 2022).