Michelle Kooy

Kooy studies the politics of urban environments and the processes of urbanization, focusing on questions of urban justice, the right to the city, and water equity. Her urban political ecological research approach studies urbanization by following the social and ecological processes and relations through which physical environments (water) and society are transformed. Her analysis is relational, connecting the production of the city to the transformation of environments and societies far beyond the city.

The relation between power and water is central in the work of Kooy, with explicit attention to how uneven social relations shape distributions and transformations of water and water related risks into and through the city. Kooy is also interested in questions around the co-existence of urban water infrastructure systems.  

Kooy is the Principal Investigator of an Indonesian-Dutch Research cooperation project in Semarang, Indonesia, called GroundUp: a practice based analysis of groundwater governance for integrated urban water resources management. She is a co-Investigator in the N.W.O. research project led by Utrecht University, Following Frontiers of the ‘Forest City’: Towards Sustainable and Inclusive Urbanisation in Kalimantan and Beyond, and co-Investigator in the N.W.O. research project led by the University of Amsterdam, Ecological Community Engagements: Imagining sustainability and the water-energy-food nexus in urban South African environments. She is also a member of the EU funded International Training network: https://www.nextwatergovernance.net/.