Rahul Ranjan, PhD
I am a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Environmental and Climate Justice at the Department of Geography, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Scotland (UK). Over the decade, I have ethnographically worked on the longstanding conflict between social movements, Indigenous peoples' struggles and extraction politics in India. Recently, I have also undertaken ethnographic fieldwork in the western Himalayas and conducted a short pilot study and consultation work in Aotearoa New Zealand — exploring countors of river’s rights and community mobilisation.
Between 2020-2023, I held an appointment as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo (Norway). I worked on the project: "Riverine Rights: The Currents and Consequences of Legal Innovations on The Rights of Rivers", funded by the Norwegian Research Council. The project consists of scholars from various disciplines and countries working towards exploring rivers' contours, rights, and legal personhood.
My long-term research and doctoral work on “The Political Life of Memory: Birsa Munda in Contemporary India” was published by the Cambridge University Press in 2023. I have recently edited a volume, “At the crossroads of Rights”, published by Routledge Press, London.
I received my PhD (Political Anthropology) in 2020 from the School of Advanced Study, University of London, supported by Louise Arbor Studentship and Yusuf Ali Bursary. Prior to moving abroad, I earned my degrees in Politics from Jawaharlal Nehru University and the University of Delhi.
Feel free to write to me.
I am also an aspiring writer with an immense interest in thinking about and working on the intersection of environmental justice, climate change, rivers, history/memory and emotions, notably grief. I am passionate about the radical need to recognise care and kindness in academic spaces, centre the power of storytelling, and develop the tender craft of writing as we live through the age of changing climate.