Research & Projects

HEAT-STRESS IN THE CAMBODIAN WORKPLACE

Postdoctoral Project

In February 2025, I joined the Wellcome-funded project "OPPRESSIVE HEAT: A Multiscalar Study on Heat Stress in the Cambodian Workplace." This interdisciplinary initiative, led by Prof. Laurie Parsons (Principal Investigator) and Prof. Jennifer Cole (Co-PI), brings together a diverse research team, including a dedicated local ground team in Cambodia.

In March 2025, I conducted my first field visit to Cambodia, engaging with a range of occupational sectors—construction workers, garment workers, but mainly with paratransit (tuk-tuk and motodop) drivers. My upcoming paper explores the everyday negotiations of heat by paratransit drivers in Phnom Penh.

As an ethnographer, I am deeply interested in how heat is not only endured but embodied, acclimatised, and narrated in everyday work environments and beyond. This project allows me to investigate heat as a climate disaster. I want to explore it as a visceral, physiological, and socio-political phenomenon on how it is felt, lived with, and managed by marginalised communities.

HUMAN-NONHUMAN RELATIONS IN THE INDIAN SUNDARBAN

FROM THE CONTEXT OF CYCLONIC DISASTERS

Doctoral Project

Between 2018 and 2023, I conducted my doctoral research in two forest-fringe villages of the Indian Sundarbans, a region known for ecological fragility and recurring cyclonic disasters and post-cyclone flooding. My dissertation examines how local communities navigate and endure these crises, and how their relationships with nonhuman entities, particularly mangroves, tigers (as well as snakes and boars), are reconfigured in the process.

Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, household surveys, interviews, and participatory mapping, I explore the complex, and often conflicting, dynamics of survival, vulnerability, and adaptation. My work examines how climate-induced disruptions lead to cohabitation challenges and conservation contestations, while also generating new forms of resilience and interspecies negotiation.

Rooted in political ecology, disaster studies, and multispecies ethnography, this research foregrounds lived experience and aims to contribute to discussions on climate justice, policy and the future of human–nonhuman coexistence in climate-vulnerable regions.

DECOLONIAL AND ARTISTIC INTERPRETATION OF MULTISPECIES COEXISTENCES

Research Project (2024-25) funded by CHSS-AAS

This project was an extension of my doctoral research to explore how Dalit and Adivasi communities in the Indian Sundarbans live alongside nonhuman beings such especially the less conspicuous wildlife, alongside tigers, in the context of recurring climate disasters. Taking a decolonial and participatory approach, it focuses on everyday practices of coexistence, resilience, and resistance that are often overlooked in mainstream conservation narratives.

The project uses creative and community-led methods, including storytelling, painting, folk theatre, and participatory mapping. It centres local knowledge systems and lived experiences. A bilingual online exhibition in English and Bengali presents community artworks and spatial stories, offering alternative ways of understanding human and nonhuman relationships in the Sundarbans.

ECO-CULTURAL EVOLUTION OF HUMAN-SEAL RELATIONS IN ORKNEY ISLANDS

Earth Scholarship (2023) funded by SGSAH and British Council Scotland

This project explores the evolving relationship between humans and seals in the Orkney Islands, examining how cultural narratives, ecological practices, and conservation politics have shaped and been shaped by these interactions.

Framed by climate change and rising human–wildlife conflict, it considers seals as both biological species and mythological beings embedded in local life. Using oral histories, selkie myths, archaeological records, qualitative interviews, and participatory mapping, the research traces human–seal entanglements across time in the context of environmental precarity and biodiversity concerns.

A digital story map was made to spatialise both tangible and intangible evidence, presenting layered narratives of past and present human–seal relations in Orkney through GIS, community storytelling, and cultural heritage archives.

FOOD PRACTICES AND FOOD MEMORIES AS CULTURAL HERITAGE

Independent Research Project (2024-25) funded by INTACH

This research project explored the culinary landscape of Dholavira and Janan village, Khadir Island, Bhachau Taluka, Rann of Kutch, Gujarat (Fig. 1). The study documented gastronomic experiences at the intersection of class, caste, and gender dynamics, focusing on localised food and heirloom recipes using ingredients that are endemic to the region.

It also examined community meal preparations, food-related memories, and traditions, while highlighting recent changes in the community due to environmental and climatic shifts. These changes are evident in the decline of raw materials for certain recipes, influenced not only by physical and ecological factors but also by social transformations. This work was co-conducted with Ahana Ghosh.

If you found my work interesting or similar to yours, I would love to stay in touch and engage in academic dialogues and collaborations. I am open to learning new things, experimenting, and expanding my work!

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