Bio data of the Experts (Winter School 2017)

Kumar Akhilesh (Director of the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, Chennai) is interested in prehistory, experimental archaeology (reconstructing ancient technology), satellite remote sensing and GIS. He has obtained his Ph.D. from the Deccan College, with a focus on the prehistoric archaeology of Jharkhand. He is currently the co-Director of the research project on the prehistory and palaeoenvironments of Attirampakkam, and is Director of a research project on prehistoric sites in Tamil Nadu. In the frame of an ISRO-GBP project and in collaboration with ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) and RRSC (Regional Centre for Remote Sensing, South), he is also involved in a project on applications of satellite remote sensing and GIS in archaeology for the purpose of research and heritage management. He has numerous research papers in peer-reviewed national and international journals to his credit, including Science and has presented his work in conferences in India and abroad.

Rémi de Bercegol is a Research Fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). He has a doctorate in Urban Planning from LATTS (research group on technology, territories and societies) at ENPC/UMLV, Paris Est, France. He was a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH) in New Delhi between 2008 and 2012. During this time, he undertook research for his book on small towns and decentralisation reforms in northern India, which has been published in 2017 by Springer in India. Beyond the scope of India, his research now focuses on world urbanisation and the transformation of cities in the global South, analysed principally in terms of their essential services (water, sanitation, waste management and energy).

Anne Casile is a Research Fellow at IRD (French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development), and a member of the Research Unit PALOC (Patrimoines Locaux and Governance, IRD/ National Museum of Natural History) in Paris. She has been assigned by the IRD in India, and is an Associate Researcher of the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP). In the field of spatial and landscape archaeology, her research focuses on water management and the relationship between religion, power, and water control in the making of places and cultural landscapes in Central India. She is currently developing an interdisciplinary project to investigate the impacts of rainfall uncertainty and monsoon anomalies on societal development and vulnerability in medieval times, and the ways people adapted to hydroclimatic variability, insecurity, and extremes in the semi-arid region of Malwa, around Mandu.

Sangeeta Dasgupta is Associate Professor at Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She works on Adivasi history, environmental history, colonial ethnography, missionary studies and visual representations. She is the author of Reordering Adivasi Worlds: Oraons and Tana Bhagats in Colonial and Postcolonial Times (forthcoming from Oxford University Press) and The Politics of Belonging in India: Becoming Adivasi (along with DJ Rycroft), Routledge, London and New York, 2011. She has published widely in leading scholarly journals like Modern Asian Studies and Studies in History, and was guest editor for a special issue titled ‘Reading the Archive, Reframing Adivasi Histories’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 53:1, 2016. She has been Asa Briggs Visiting Fellow at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom; Visiting Fellow at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, France; International Visiting Fellow at Grinnell College, U.S.A; Agatha Harrison Memorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford; Research Fellow of the Charles Wallace India Trust, U.K.; and Visiting Fellow of the Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, U.K.

Shubaghato Dasgupta is a senior fellow at CPR and director of the Scaling City Institutions for India (Sci-Fi) Sanitation initiative. His current research focuses on drinking water and sanitation in India and the world, with particular reference to flagship government programs and service delivery challenges in smaller cities. Other major areas of work include urban infrastructure and service delivery financing, housing and slum rehabilitation, urban sector public finance, and urban environmental infrastructure planning, management, and investment, alternatives. Before coming to CPR, Shubhagato led the Support to National Policies for Urban Poverty Reduction project, a collaboration between the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and India’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation to develop pro-poor urban policies in 20 cities across 15 states. Prior to this, he has also worked on issues of urban development with a wide range of other public, private, multilateral, and non-governmental organizations, including as Senior Urban Specialist at the World Bank, Assistant Vice President at the Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC), the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO) and The Action Research Unit.

Rémy Delage is a Research Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies (CEIAS – EHESS, Paris) of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). His work focuses on the role of religious circulations (processions, pilgrimages, journeys) in structuring places and territorial belonging in India and Pakistan. Dr. Delage published with Dr. Michel Boivin an edited book Devotional Islam in Contemporary South Asia: Shrines, Journeys and Wanderers (Routledge, London, 2016), and recently co-edited with Mathieu Claveyrolas Religion and its Territories in South Asia and Beyond. Traversing, Performing, Overstepping (EHESS Editions, Paris, 2016).

Anju Dwivedi is a Social Anthropologist with an experience of over 20 years in Programme Implementation, Coordination, Research, and Capacity Building, Participatory Methodologies (Participatory Research, Participatory Training, Participatory Monitoring, Evaluation and Impact Assessment). She has worked on issues of strengthening local self-governance institutions in India such as Panchayati Raj Institutions and Urban Local Bodies, Water and Sanitation, Education, Gender, Social accountability and Urban Housing and Poverty. She has extensively worked with Civil Society Organisations in India and also worked for five years with the Ministry of Housing and urban Poverty Alleviation (MoHUPA) under DFID supported project on “Support to National Policies on Urban Poverty Reduction” before joining Centre for Policy Research (CPR) in 2015. She is currently working as a Senior Researcher in CPR in Urban Sanitation programme.  She is involved in a pilot project demonstrating appropriate and sustainable sanitation service delivery in two cities – Angul and Dhenkanal in Odisha (India) with partner NGO, Practical Action. She has undertaken an ethnographic study on sanitation in small towns in Odisha and on capacity building needs of urban local bodies and the State government on sanitation. Both study reports are currently under publication.

Stéphanie Duvail is a Research Fellow in the field of geography at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD). Her research deals primarily with water and wetland management in Africa, with a focus on the impacts of large dams on the ecosystems and livelihoods of coastal wetlands and their potential restoration through managed flood releases. She analyses the impact of the changing hydrodynamics on the African deltas and floodplains, with a specific interest on the natural resource access and sharing, on the associated land tenure and public policy issues, and their modifications in a globalized context. She has experience with multi-disciplinary and participatory research in West Africa (Senegal and Mauritania) and East Africa (Kenya and Tanzania).

Vincent Herbreteau is a Research Fellow in the field of health geography at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) in the UMR 228 ESPACE-DEV Research Unit. His research focuses on the spatial analysis of diseases, from the ecological study of the hosts and vectors of pathogens, the investigation of the exposure of human populations to these vectors and pathogens (social patterns, access to health services, etc.), to an approach of the risk of disease transmission. He is currently responsible of the development of research activities in the field of “health and environment” at SEAS-OI Station in the Indian Ocean. https://cv.archives-ouvertes.fr/vincent-herbreteau

Nathalie Jean-Baptiste is a Marie Curie Global Fellow currently based at Ardhi University in Tanzania. Her work focuses on the vulnerability of infrastructure systems to climate related risks the relationship between infrastructure, society and the environment in low-income countries. She has extensive international research experience with a focus on infrastructure in Mexico and Australia as well as risk assessment and adaptation in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Tanzania. She is the Team Leader of the Climate Change and Environmental Risk Research Group at the Institute of Human Settlements Studies, the Coordinator of the Housing Network of the International Association People-Environment Studies (IAPS) and a Lead Coordinating Author of the chapter on Housing and Informal Settlements of the Second Assessment Report on Climate Change and cities (ARC3-2, Urban Climate Change Research Network, Cambridge Press: 2016)

Ambarish Karunanith Ambar is a Senior Researcher Associate at the Scaling City Institutions for India (Sci-Fi) Sanitation initiative at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi (India). His current work mainly focuses on technical analysis of alternative solution for improved sanitation in Urban and Rural areas. Prior to joining the Centre for Policy Research, he was heading the technical support unit at Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, Odisha (India). As a head of the unit, he was supporting the municipal body in planning and implementation of National and State level Urban Infrastructure Schemes (Smart Cities Mission, AMRUT and Swachh Bharat Mission). He was trained as a Chemical Engineer at Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore (India) and he obtained his masters in Energy and Environmental Engineering from Linkoping University, Sweden. During his tenure at Linkoping University, he worked as a researcher in Environmental Technology and Management Division of the University. As a graduate researcher, he got involved in system perspective studies of alternate transportation fuel.

Frédéric Landy is the Director of the French Institute of Pondicherry. He had been teaching social geography at the University of Paris Ouest-Nanterre, France, since 1992. He is a fellow of the UMR LAVUE laboratory, and an associate fellow of the Centre for South Asian Studies (CEIAS), Paris.  He has authored several books and articles on Indian agriculture, rural issues, slum policies. He was the coordinator of a French National Agency for Research (ANR)-supported project entitled “Urban National Parks in Emerging Countries” (UNPEC, 2012-16) that compared the national parks in Mumbai, Nairobi, Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro. He is now coordinating the Indian case study (in Uttarakhand) of another ANR project entitled “Whose Landscape in Asia?” (AQAPA) focused on the relationships between minorities, landscape, agriculture and tourism in rural highlands of India, Nepal, China, Laos and Vietnam.

Chloé Leclère is a PhD Scholar in Economics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon in France. Her doctoral research focuses on sanitation in India and articulates public schemes, household decision making and their interactions with  both economic and residential spaces. She is a member of the laboratory – Groupe d’Analyse et Théorie Economique Lyon-Saint Etienne in France. She is also affiliated with the Center for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH) in New Delhi and to the French research unit « Indian knowledge and world » (USR 3330).  Former Junior Teaching Fellow at the ENS de Lyon, she holds a Master’s degree in Economic Analysis and Policies (Paris School of Economics, EHESS) and another Master’s in Social Sciences and Education (ENS of Lyon).

Raphaël Mathevet is an ecologist and geographer, director of research at the CNRS and new head of the department of Ecology at IFP, on leave from the Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive in Montpellier (France). He works on the conservation of biodiversity, protected areas and conservation planning tools, adaptive co-management, evaluation of public policies (agro-environmental schemes, Natura 2000, ecological network, protected area management). Working on participatory modeling, he applies simulation tools and role-playing game in interdisciplinary approaches to resolving management conflicts, especially in the context of Mediterranean wetlands and natural resources management. His most recent work focuses on the concept of ecological solidarity, the resilience of social and ecological systems, social representations and mental models, the human dimensions of conservation and human/wildlife conflicts. He is a member of the Protected Areas’ commission of the French IUCN Committee, vice-president of the UNESCO MAB France Committee and a member of the international advisory committee for Biosphere Reserves of the UNESCO Man and Biosphere program. During the last decade he developed an historical and political ecology approach of landscape and social-ecological dynamics, with a focus on science/management or science/policy interfaces at local, regional, national and international levels.

Thanuja Mummidi is Assistant Professor in the Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at Pondicherry University, where she has been teaching since 2009. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Madras. Post Ph.D. she was awarded the Urgent Anthropology Fellowship by the Royal Anthropological Institute, U.K. She later collaborated with the Rural Employment and Microfinance (RUME) programme of the French Institute of Pondicherry in researching the impact of income generating activities on women and their empowerment. She also coordinated a project on ‘Forms of Money with the Konda Reddis’ funded by the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion, UCl, Irvine. Her specialisation lies at the interface of economic and ecological anthropology, food sovereignity, and issues of rights and development policy of indigenous populations. She started her research on the Konda Reddis, an indigenous population in south India, in early 2000. Her publications are largely with reference to them.

Christophe Jalil Nordman is Research Fellow at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), and is currently assigned to IFP (Pondicherry, India) and DIAL (Paris, France). He holds a PhD in development economics from University of Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He has an expertise in socio-economic data collection and analysis. His research focuses on the functioning of labour markets in developing countries, including the formation of earnings, skills and social networks, discrimination, employment and household vulnerabilities, and the labour consequences of migrations. His former regional focus was North and West Africa, Madagascar, Vietnam and Bangladesh, where he has acquired over the years an extensive field experience, set up research networks and conducted numerous research projects. He is currently in charge of a socio-economic data collection project within the Social Sciences Department at IFP focusing on households’ financial practises, labour, skills, social networks and mobilities in rural Tamil Nadu (LAKSMI project).

Felix Padel is a London-based anthropologist-activist. He has authored several books and articles on tribal and environmental issues, and teaches at Universities in India and abroad, including the Centre for World Environmental History, University of Sussex. Among several positions held in India, he was Professor of Rural Management at the Indian Institute of Health Management Research (2012-14), and Visiting Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University during 2015-16. He has a degree in Classics from University of Oxford. Later on, he switched to Anthropology, doing an M.Phil in Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics. His D.Phil in Anthropology at University of Oxford is an exercise in ‘reverse anthropology’, analysing the power structures imposed by British rule over a tribal people in Central India, that have endured and intensified post-Independence. His D.Phil became his first book, Sacrificing People: Invasions of a Tribal Landscape (1995/2010). More recent publications include Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel (with Samarendra Das, 2010), and Ecology, Economy: Quest for a Socially Informed Connection (with Ajay Dandekar and JeemolUnni, 2013). The former proved an effective tool in supporting activism aimed at stopping the London-based company Vedanta from mining a sacred mountain in Odisha.

Shanti Pappu (Professor and Founder / Secretary of the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, Chennai) is interested in prehistory, palaeoenvironments, ethnoarchaeology, history of archaeology and public archaeology (especially for children and teachers). She is a former Professor of Prehistory at the Deccan College Postgraduate & Research Institute. She completed her doctorate from the Deccan College Post-graduate and Research Institute (Pune, 1996), and was subsequently a Homi Bhabha Fellow. She was a Charles Wallace Fellow at the Ancient India and Iran Trust, U.K., and has obtained several awards. She holds a law degree with a dissertation on cultural heritage laws of India and is a registered advocate. She has published two books, with numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals, including Science, as also one book for children on archaeology and several popular articles. She is currently director of the research project on prehistory and palaeoenvironments in Tamil Nadu, including excavations at the site of Attirampakkam.

Jayaprakash P. Rao joined Osmania University as a Lecturer in 1975 and retired as Professor in 2011. Soon after joining Osmania University he got an opportunity to work with the renowned anthropologist Fürer-Haimendorf in Eastern Ghats between 1978 and 1980. He learned anthropological methodology from the Haimendorfs and contributed to “Tribes of India – Struggle for Survival.  Soon he got interested in tribal rights and conservation of forests. In the context of tribal rights he filed cases in AP Highcourt challenging Panchayat elections in 1994 as 73rd ammendment of the Indian constitution was not extended to the Scheduled areas. The High court set aside applicability of AP Panchyat Act to the Scheduled areas. Along with other friends launched a nationwide movement of tribals to implement the recommendations of the Committee of Parliamentarians and experts to extend the 73rd constitutional amendment, which finally resulted in the Parliament passing PESA. In 2005 AP Government proposed to build Polavaram Project on the river Godavari. Once the project is completed it would displace more than 2 lakhs tribals in AP, Orissa and Chhattisgarh. Intervened legally in the Supreme Court and stalled the project. After retirement advice and guide tribal CBO’s and a few NGO’s on tribal issues.

Ravi Rebbapragada is the Executive Director of Samata, Visakhapatnam. He has more than three decades of engagement with land, tribal rights, law, governance in scheduled areas, forest rights and livelihoods of the tribal population. As Executive Director of Samata he and his team has been successful in winning the Samata vs. State of Andhra Pradesh case in the Supreme Court in 1997. The landmark judgment of the Supreme Court secured the rights of tribal population over land. He has been at the forefront of conducting several workshops, training camps, awareness campaigns, capacity building programs at all three levels- local, state and national level on issues relating to governance in scheduled areas, PESA, the Samata Judgment, Forest Rights Act, livelihood and health concerns of mining communities, illegal mining and rights over natural resources. He is also the Chairperson of Mines, Minerals and People, a national level alliance that has been working on the various issues concerning mining and the community. He has been networking, lobbying, and campaigning at the national level on Mining and tribal issues. He was the member of Steering Committee for the Empowerment of Scheduled Tribes for 12th Five Year Plan. He was also member of National Forest Rights (Joint) Committee of MOEF and MOTA in 2010. For formulating the 10th Five Year Plan, He  was member of the Sub-Committee on Tribal Policy. Adding to this he has been part of various studies and made valuable contributions. For his spectacular work for the tribal communities, he has been recognized with various awards. He received the prestigious Godfrey Philip Bravery Award under Social Act of Courage in 2011.

Arkaja Singh is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, where she manages the Scaling City Institutions for India (“Sci-Fi II”) Sanitation initiative at CPR. Her current research focuses on legal frameworks, institutions and governance of sanitation in Indian cities, especially in the case of non-network sanitation. She is also responsible for managing research and interventions relating to manual scavenging and caste issues relating to sanitation work, as well as investigations into the business models of small-scale non-network sanitation service providers. She trained as a lawyer, and has over a decade of experience in development sector consulting and research. Her other areas of interest are urbanisation, land, urban poverty, governance and institutions.

Olivier Telle is a Research Fellow at CNRS currently affiliated with CSH. The general aim of his research is to better understand how socio-spatial dynamics of cities are connected to epidemic diffusion, in India (Delhi), as well as Asia (Vientiane, Bangkok). By integrating human mobility, socio-economic, infra-structural and governance disparities, Olivier aims to reduce disease diffusion within and between cities.  He is particularly interested in reconnecting sanitation – in his broad meaning- with urban health. Before being recruited by CNRS, Olivier conducted a 3 years postdoc at Institut Pasteur Paris (Functionnal Genetic of Infectious Diseases).