Dr Komali Yenneti

Komali Yenneti is ‘New Generation Network (NGN) Scholar – Smart Cities’ in the Faculty of Built Environment, University of New South Wales (UNSW) and at the Australia India Institute (AII) based at the University of Melbourne. She is a trained Architect and Environmental Planner, and has a PhD in Geography and Environmental Sciences from the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on contemporary environmental policy and projects, such as sustainable smart cities, low-carbon urban development and energy transitions across cities, regions and communities in the Asia-Pacific with particular emphasis on empirical studies grounded in political economy, development and inequality, and spatial planning.

Komali has five years of research and a decade of advocacy experience in the relevant areas, including working with reputed organisations such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Nanjing, University of Utah, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and CEPT University in India, German Development Institute (DIE) in Bonn, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) in Japan, The Commonwealth International Secretariat, and Energy Geographies Research Group (EGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), London. She has published articles on energy and urban sustainability in journals like Geoforum, Journal of Rural Studies, Energy Policy, Geographical Review and Habitat International, and is editing a book (with Dr. Oleg Golubchikov from Cardiff University) on‘Smart cities, energy and sustainability: governing cities to a low-carbon future’ to be published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2018. Komali was a recipient of research grants from international organisations, including the Midlands Energy Graduate School, Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) Germany, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Natural Science Foundation of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences, and is the founding chair of International Geographical Union’s (IGU’s) Young and Early-Career Geographers Task Force.