Neha Sami studies urban and regional development, and governance in post-liberalisation India. Her research focuses on the governance of infrastructure, especially mega-infrastructure in the context of post-liberalisation urban India. Neha also works on questions of environmental governance focusing on institutional analysis and state capacity. Her recent work has also looked at the political economy of higher education in urban studies as well as the challenges of building research capacities in Southern institutions.

Her teaching at IIHS focuses on questions of governance and sustainability. Her writing on some of these issues have been published in Economic and Political Weekly, Environment & Urbanization, Nature Water, the International Journal for Urban and Regional Research (IJURR), and Land Use Policy, as well as through contributions to several edited volumes. She is a Board Member of the Research Committee 21 (RC21) on Sociology of Urban and Regional Development of the International Sociological Association and serves on the editorial board for the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR).

She holds a PhD in urban planning from the University of Michigan, a Master’s degree in Environmental Management from the Yale School of the Environment and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Mumbai. Prior to beginning graduate school at the University of Michigan, Neha worked with the Boston Redevelopment Authority as an analyst with the Economic Development Division, as well as with the Environment and Sustainable Development Division of the UN-ESCAP (Bangkok).