Fizzah is a PhD candidate in Human Geography and Urban Studies. Her research focuses on speculative practices in residential real estate in Lahore, Pakistan, and examines their links with real estate growth, public investment in housing, and the market for adequate housing.

Fizzah has a background in urban planning, and has nine years of research and project management experience. Her research interests focus on questions of land, housing, transport, and the politics of infrastructure development. She has worked on affordable housing development, gender equity in transport planning, and dispossession in rapidly urbanizing cities of the Global South.

Most recently, she worked as a researcher on the project ‘Kinship and Care after Dislocation in Urban South Asia: Colombo and Lahore Compared,’ as part of the British Academy’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) on Cities and Infrastructure. She is also co-lead of the Pakistan team for the project ‘Navigating the grid in the ‘world-class city: poverty, gender and access to services in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka,’ under the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) GCRF ‘(Re)Thinking the Off-Grid City’ programme.

Fizzah holds a Masters in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with a specialization in International Development Planning, and a Bachelors in Social Sciences from the Lahore University of Management Sciences. 

Research interests

1. Land and housing
2.  Gender and mobility
3.  Dispossession and resettlement
4.  Cities and Infrastructure
5.  Urban inequality and politics

Provisional thesis title
Speculation and Shelter in the Global South: The Case of Housing in Lahore, Pakistan 

Publications

• Democracy, Legitimacy, and Mega-Project Politics: The Evolution of Lahore’s First BRT Corridor. Antipode. Fizzah Sajjad and Umair Javed. 2022. Read paper. 
• Victim, broker, activist, fixer: Surviving dispossession in working class. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Ammara Maqsood and Fizzah Sajjad. 2021. Read paper. 
• Discipline in Sri Lanka, punish in Pakistan: neoliberalism, governance, and housing compared, (w/ Dr. Asha Abeyasekera, Dr. Ammara Maqsood, Iromi Perera, Dr. Jonathan Spencer), Journal of the British Academy September 2019. Read paper.  
• Overcoming Barriers to Women’s Mobility, policy brief and policy paper, supported by the Punjab Commission on the Status for Women (PCSW), January 2019. Read paper.
• Resource Urbanisms: Asia’s divergent city models of Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Singapore and Hong Kong,” report commissioned by the LSE Middle East Center, LSE Cities, November 2017. Read paper.  
• High Streets for All, report commissioned by the Greater London Authority/Mayor of London , LSE Cities & We Made That, September 2017. Read report. 
• Gender Equity in Transport Planning: Improving Women’s Access to Public Transport in Pakistan, policy paper, supported by the International Growth Centre, CERP, March 2017. Read paper.  

Media

• Non-fiction: Urban mobility and its discontents. Read article. 
• Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policies – The Need for a New Approach. Read article. 
• Cities: Who makes planning decisions for us? Dawn. Read article. 
• Who will benefit from relief package for construction industry — the vulnerable or builders and developers? Dawn. Read article. 
• Losing a home in Colombo and Lahore. Himal Southasian. Read article. 
• A review of Michael Levien’s Dispossession Without Development: Land Grabs in Neoliberal India. Jamhoor. Read article. 

Scholarships 

• Fulbright Graduate Scholarship 2012-2014

Affiliations/memberships

• Research Fellow, Mahbub ul Haq Research Centre, Lahore University of Management Sciences
• Graduate Researcher, Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives, Pakistan 

Skills
ArcGIS, QGIS,  NviVo

Supervisors

Prof Claire Mercer
Dr Romola Sanyal