Negotiating Terrain in Local Governance: Freedom, Functioning and Barriers of Women Councillors in India

Gopa Samanta works as Professor at the Department of Geography, The University of Burdwan. Currently she is also in additional charge of Director, UGC-HRDC, The University of Burdwan. Her research interests cut across the fields of Urban, Gender, and Water. She has carried out research in Eastern India with interdisciplinary methodologies and collaborative research team under the financial assistance from different national and international institutions such as the ICSSR, Ford Foundation, World Bank, Australia India Institute and INR-France, IRD-France. As a geographer, she has passion for undertaking in-depth and field-based empirical research. She acted as the ’Gender Chair’ of the Paris Sorbonne University, France in 2016. She was visiting fellow at Paris Diderot University, France (May-June 2018), Australian National University, Australia (May 2018 and October-November-December 2004) and French Institute of Pondicherry (October 2005 and October 2006), India. Her co-authored book Dancing with the River: People and Life on the Chars of South Asia has been published from Yale University Press. She has contributed immensely through publishing journal articles and book chapters. She acts as peer reviewer of articles in academically acclaimed journals such as Community Development Journal, Development in Practice, ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, Economic and Political Weekly, Contemporary South Asia, Local Environment, Built Environment etc. Her detailed profile on teaching and research are available at the Burdwan University website. She is dedicated to disseminate the knowledge of Social science in general and Geography in particular beyond the classroom and academic community. To reach the wider audience, she contributes highly to popular writing in provincial language through news articles and other popular magazine articles in Bengali. She is passionate in mentoring PhD students coming from peripheral locations.Riya Banerjee was a Research Fellow in the Department of Geography, The University of Burdwan for five years ending in 2018. Presently, she is posted as a Sub-Inspector of Schools under School Education Department, Government of West Bengal, India. Her research interests are in the fields of Gender studies, Urban and Environmental studies. She has carried out her research on women in Local Governance for more than five years and recently has been awarded Ph.D. in 2019. She has presented research papers in different national and international seminars and conferences. She has publications in National and International Journals and in edited volumes as book chapters. Besides writing in English, she has also written in Bengali and in popular magazines to reach out common people outside academia.