Ramya Ramanath

Ramya Ramanath is Associate Professor in the School of Public Service at DePaul University, where she serves as Chair of the International Public Service (IPS) degree program. She also contributes to the Applied Diplomacy and Refugee and Forced Migration Studies programs. Her research examines how individuals, households, communities, organizations, and governments navigate questions of housing, migration, belonging, and inequality in rapidly changing urban environments.

Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews, participant observation, focus groups, archival research, and intensive fieldwork, Ramanath studies the intersections of housing, urban transformation, migration, and governance. Her work sits at the crossroads of organizational theory, urban sociology, planning, anthropology, and political science, with a particular interest in how people pursue security and stability amid conditions of social and economic uncertainty.

Much of her scholarship focuses on housing as both a material necessity and a source of identity, aspiration, and social mobility. Her research has examined housing resettlement in Mumbai, homeownership pathways in Chennai’s agrarian urban frontier, and the aspirations of first-generation homeowners purchasing market-rate affordable housing on metropolitan peripheries. Her book, A Place to Call Home: Women as Agents of Change in Mumbai (2019), explores how women displaced through large-scale resettlement programs navigate homeownership, neighborhood formation, and urban change while actively shaping new forms of community and belonging.

A second strand of her research examines migration, displacement, and housing insecurity. Through comparative research across global cities, she investigates how governments, nonprofit organizations, faith communities, advocacy groups, and local residents respond to the housing needs of migrants and displaced populations. Her recent work explores housing precarity among irregular migrants and examines host-guest relations, sanctuary practices, and the ways residents and institutions negotiate shelter, belonging, and mutual obligation in migrant-receiving cities such as Chicago.

Before entering academia, Ramanath helped establish a microfinance institution in southern India and worked in housing finance and development organizations in both urban and rural settings. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Social Work from India, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Design and Planning from Virginia Tech. Additional information about her research, publications, and ongoing projects is available at www.ramyaramanath.com.