Subhashree Nath successfully defends her Doctoral Dissertation on Transformative Community-Based Adaptation

On 27 April 2026, DLGS fellow Subhashree Nath successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, "Facilitating Inclusive Decision-Making for Transformative Community-based Adaptation," with Magna Cum Laude.

Subhashree presented a cumulative dissertation comprising three publications that develop and operationalise the Transformative Community-Based Adaptation (TCbA) framework, extending conventional community-based adaptation by actively unmasking power relations and creating enabling conditions for transformation. The work introduces help Them help Themselves (hThT), a facilitator-facing decision-support prototype for inclusive climate adaptation featuring anonymous household-level mobile voting, tested in an informal settlement in Southwest Delhi to support participation among women and marginalised community members. The dissertation contributes to research on participatory climate governance, boundary object theory, and communities of practice.

The dissertation was supervised by Prof. Dr. Marc Wolfram, director of Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER) and Chair of Spatial Development and Transformation, TU Dresden. Prof. Dr. Jörg Noennig served as co-supervisor. He is the Professor for Digital City Science at the HCU HafenCity Universität in Hamburg and directs the WISSENSARCHITEKTUR Laboratory of Knowledge Architecture at TU Dresden. Prof. Dr. Lisa Schipper acted as external examiner. She is the Professor for Development Geography at the University of Bonn. The doctoral committee was chaired by Prof. Dr. Martin Behnisch

Subhashree will continue to pursue her research interests in climate adaptation governance and participatory digital tools for just urban futures.