Student Fellows
Travel Grant Recipients
Mrinalini Penumaka
- 2024 J-WAFS Travel Grantee
- PhD candidate
- Honorable Mention, 2025 J-WAFS Fellowships for Water Solutions
- Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Mrinalini Penumaka is a PhD candidate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, affiliated with the International Development Group and Professor Gabriella Carolini's City Infrastructure Equity Lab. Her research examines urban and infrastructure transitions in the context of cascading climate impacts. She takes a political economy approach to understand the governance and financing of climate and development challenges in the Global South. Her current projects study climate-focused infrastructure and labor transitions in South Africa, comparing transitions in water and energy systems and the landscape of multilateral and bilateral urban climate finance addressing the Amazon's rapidly urbanizing biosphere. As an international development practitioner, she worked with the Oxford University Centre for the Environment, the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, the World Bank, and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization conducting fieldwork in India, Thailand, China, Niger, and South Africa. By integrating scholarship and praxis, she seeks to learn from and support community-led climate action and, in turn, inform climate justice and equity in international development and urban policy.