Parama Roy
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2008
E-mail: proy@gsu.edu
Phone: 404-413-5779
Research Interests: Urban Geography
Dr. Parama Roy completed her Bachelors of Science and Masters of Science degrees in Geography from Presidency College, Calcutta University, India. She then came to the U.S. to acquire her PhD in Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She joined the Department of Geosciences at the Georgia State University right after completing her PhD in Fall 2008.
Dr. Roy is currently teaching Geog1101, Introduction to Human Geography and Geog8010, Seminar in Urban Economic Geography.
Her research interests are urban political ecology, urban political economy, issues of urban environmental inequality and socio-environmental justice. Dr. Roy is interested in understanding how urban environments are produced and managed by different state, market, and civic agencies under present neoliberal political-economy. Her dissertation research, funded by the National Science Foundation, focused on how the present political, economic, and ecological processes produce and reproduce uneven urban green spaces in the city of Milwaukee, with particularly negative implications for the inner-city African-American communities. Furthermore, this research examined non-profit and community-based greening activities as a civic response to the process of neoliberalization and privatization of green infrastructure management, which traditionally had been the pride and responsibility of the public sector. While conducting this research Dr Roy closely worked with a community-based organization engaged in gardening efforts, the Walnut Way Conservation Corps, in inner-city Milwaukee. This ethnographic research helped her understand what such efforts could do for the civil society in terms of addressing issues of socio-environmental injustice and whether they could empower marginalized communities, not just environmentally, but also socio-politically. Dr. Roy plans to continue her work on urban environmental management and the role of community participation in addressing issues of social justice within present entrepreneurial political-economy.
