Dr Sonia Hoque

Sonia Hoque is on the leadership team of the ‘SafePani’ model in Bangladesh – a professional water service delivery model for schools and healthcare facilities. She won the ‘SoGE Engagement and Impact Awards, 2025’ in recognition of her research and policy engagement work that led the Government of Bangladesh to co-fund the SafePani model from 2025 to 2030. Sonia also collaborates with Uptime Global to pilot and scale-up a similar result-based funding model - ‘SafeManzi’ - in Zambia. 

As an environmental social scientist, Sonia’s research focuses on drivers and distribution of water risks and socio-spatial inequalities in the Global South. Her book, The Water Diaries (2025), combines empirical fieldwork with methodological innovation to examine the lived experiences of the global water crisis in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh. Her work on water-society interactions extends to gendered experiences of water insecurities shaped by intra-household decision-making, social inequalities in exposure to urban river pollution, and dynamics of informal water markets in South Asia and Africa.