Solomon Benjamin is faculty at the Department of Humanities and Social Science at IIT- Madras and was earlier faculty at Bangalore’s National Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Toronto’s Political Science, and in the late 1990s till 2004, visiting faculty at Bangalore’s National Law School of India University. Benjamin’s ongoing and collaborative research focuses on the extensive economy of youth servicing and re-engineering Smart phone and laptop refurbishment that connects India’s electronic clusters with those in SE Asia, Dubai, and Shenzhen in China. His other research focuses on land and territoriality including a longer term connect with the Structural Effects of Property at the University of Erfurt and Jena with Prof. Martin Fuch and Dr. Varun Patil, including in 2023 as a Mercator https://sfb294-eigentum.de/en/members/solomon-benjamin/; and earlier in 2022, under an EHESS fellowship anchored at the Géographie-cités Paris CNRS, lecturing across Europe https://geographie-cites.cnrs.fr/en/solomon-benjamin-guest-researcher-lectures-in-november/ and https://enseignements.ehess.fr/2022-2023/ue/448 These research interests go back decades to Benjamin’s PhD at MIT’s Urban Studies & Planning (1996): Neighborhood as factory–the influence of land development and civic politics on an industrial cluster in Delhi India. A 25-year land – economy history of East Delhi’s Viswas Nagar at Shahdara was Asia’s largest cluster of electrical conductors and cables in 1995. Here, presumptive land titles allowed for diverse land tenures linked to incremental land development spurring employment rich small firm clusters and intensive innovation. These are also connected to his engagement of actual development projects most prior to being a full time academic. Between 2005 and 1998, Benjamin advised the UNDP, Swiss Dev. Corporation (SDC), UNIDO, World Bank, the Govt. of India, and several state govt as in Karnataka, West Bengal via various development projects on land – economy – urban governance. In early 2000 Benjamin was Sector leader Economic and Livelihood Development for the Kolkata (Calcutta) Urban Services Program, Design phase (KUSP) on their economic strategy developed with elected councils of 41 urban local bodies in the Kolkata metro area. In 2005 Benjamin was the co-evaluator of an international team for the Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA) for the Housing NGO SPARC, in the early 2000s, principal evaluator for the World Bank’s Slum Networking Program in Ahmedabad and several UNDP advisories on the HDR program. In1998, he anchored the urban component of a six member evaluating team on EU Aid to India. In 1985, evaluated and researched Srilanka’s NHDA’s Million Housing Site and Services Program, as part of a MIT Team. In 1991, he authored a monograph Jobs, land and urban development: The economic success of small manufacturers in East Delhi, 1991 India. Published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Benjamin has also been engaged with groups around critical art practice, with the RAQs Media Collective’s City as Studio, awarded the Asian Art Archive’s 15 Invitations, and been involved in ceramics including co-inventing a wood fired kiln, fine arts in watercolor and pastels and photography, and carpentry and cabinet work inspired by George Nakashima and East Asian philosophies, and deeply interested in Classical Jazz and Rock.
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