Dr. Pushpa Pathak is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. Dr. Pathak has over 4 decades of extensive experience of working in the field of urban development in India, and in other developing and post-conflict countries. She has worked with premier institutions including, the National Institute of Urban Affairs, New Delhi; World Bank (Water and Sanitation Program – South Asia), New Delhi; UN-HABITAT (Afghanistan); and School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. Her current policy research interests include: (i) Addressing multi-scalar challenges pertaining to urban governance, planning, finance and management; (ii) Analysing growth dynamics and urban- regional transformation potential of cities of various sizes, especially small towns; (iii) Understanding women’s participation in the urban informal sector and poverty reduction. She has published a number of papers in reputed Indian and international journals as well as in edited volumes. Dr. Pathak has a PhD in Regional Development from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has spent two years at the Banaras Hindu University, India, and one year at Cambridge University, UK, doing postgraduate research. She was a Ford Fellow at the Special Program in Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA in the academic year 1989-90.