Student Fellows
Adeposi Adeogun
- PhD candidate
- 2026 -2027 Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellow for Water Solutions
- Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Adeposi Adeogun trained as an architect and urban designer at the University of Lagos and the School of Art and Design Stuttgart. He grew up in Lagos, where navigating water scarcity in a tropical city was a paradoxical, yet visceral everyday reality. As a PhD candidate in international development at MIT, he is now dedicated to deconstructing the "modern infrastructure ideal" of centralized urban service supply and making a case for hybrid systems that respect local ways of urban living.
Adeposi's research focuses on Community Development Associations (CDAs) in Lagos, Nigeria. CDAs are semi-formal units of governance that cater to the mundane infrastructural needs of everyday urban life. For example, in many cities where reliable water supply is not provided for the majority of residents, communities in poorer regions often self-organize to survive. Adeposi's study asks whether CDAs are effective in ensuring water supply during shortages or breakdowns. Through deep ethnographic fieldwork and city-wide mapping, Adeposi seeks to understand how CDAs operate and what makes some communities more resilient than others. Ultimately, this grounded approach brings the critical water systems that have long remained invisible to development partners and the state to the forefront of urban policy and planning.