JOAB OCHIENG ODERO

PhD Student

Research Title: Regional Waters and Urban Lives: Lake as Infrastructure in the Making of Kisumu
Research Group: Social and Cultural Geographies (SCG)
Thesis Advisor: Dr Allen Xiao

The PhD research focuses on urban geographies of lakes, cities and infrastructures in the Global South. It pays attention to Africa’s Great Lake Region— Lake Victoria as a socio-ecological system which spurs urbanization of East Africa’s lakeside cities such as Kisumu, Kenya to, and from the lake though people-water interactions and practices. The study blends assemblage thinking with certain perspectives of urban political ecology to investigate how different socio-material infrastructures are (re)produced at the lakefront, extended to the rest of the city, practiced and interlinked with other citywide infrastructures and finally, why lake-city infrastructuring practices result in different forms of urbanization. This study will therefore, invigorate development and policy debates on people-water relationships for shoreward heterogeneous infrastructuring in the South.

Joab holds a Master of Arts in Urban Geography from the University of Nairobi. Prior to joining NUS, he worked as a Research Associate at Kounkuey Design Initiative- Kenya on intersections among urban communities, wetlands, climate actions and health. He also supported the Ministry of Health, Kenya in developing their first Kenya Climate Change and Health Strategy 2024-2029.