ANKIT BHARDWAJ

A College Fellow at Northwestern University, I am an environmental sociologist who uses qualitative methods to research how democracies respond to climate change.

My research spans two themes. In one, I study how cultural norms of deliberation shape climate action. In another, I examine the relation between climate justice and racial classification.  Alongside developing a sociology of climate change, my work contributes to debates on the relationship between democracy and expertise, infrastructure governance, and environmental racism.

My dissertation details the case of New York, as it pursued one of the world’s most ambitious emission-reduction mandates, building on my research on expertise on decarbonization, India’s climate governance, and W.E.B. Du Bois’s theories of how environments shape racial classification.  

This work has received awards and honorable mentions from the American Sociological Association's sections on Environmental Sociology, Culture, and Theory.

My work has been published in Sociological Theory, Sociological Forum, Environmental Politics, Environmental Research Letters, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, WIREs Climate Change, Energy Research and Social Science, and numerous edited volumes.

I recieved my PhD from New York University's Department of Sociology.

I also hold a MSc. in City Design and Social Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a B.ASc in Civil Engineering from the University of Toronto. Before joining NYU, I was based at the Centre for Policy Research's Initiative on Climate, Energy, and the Environment, in New Delhi. 

I am currently serving as a student member of the ASA Theory Section Council, and am affiliated with the NYU Urban Democracy Lab,  Brown Climate Social Science Network, Columbia's Center on Organizational Innovation,  and the Institute of Public Knowledge's Doctoral Working Group on Climate Change.

I live in New York, in a railroad apartment, with my wife and scruffy dog. I have called Delhi, London, Toronto, Yokohama, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur home. I am a decent cook, but a bad photographer.