MANISHA ANANTHARAMAN

About

Welcome to my website! I am a multi-disciplinary scholar who combines critical and community-engaged perspectives to explore the potential for, pathways to and politics of just sustainability transformations. I study how economic and political ideologies, social identities and power relations impact how sustainability is conceptualized and enacted at multiple scales. I have written about the dynamics of social distinction in urban cycling movements, examined the intersections between informal work and sustainable cities, and edited a book on The Circular Economy in the Global South. Beyond research, I collaborate with organizations looking to transform consumption practices in cities through policy advocacy and institutional change. I am an Associate Fellow at Chatham House's Energy and Environment Program and was a Commissioner on the Cambridge Sustainability Commission report on Scaling Behavior Change.

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I am currently an Associate Professor of Justice, Community and Leadership at Saint Mary's College of California in the Bay Area, where I also teach in the Global and Regional Studies   and the Earth and Environmental Science   programs. My research and teaching interests connect sustainability and social justice, applying participatory and ethnographic methodologies. I teach courses on environmental justice, sustainability and development through the lenses of postcolonial/decolonial theory, marxist/feminist geography, critical race theory, and cultural studies.

I received my PhD from the Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management   at the University of California Berkeley (2015) and have a Masters in Integrative Bio-sciences from the University of Oxford (2008), where I was an Inlaks Scholar. In Spring 2019, I was invited to the Alba Viotto Visiting Professorship in Sociology   at the University of Geneva, where I taught a graduate class on Sociology from Below.

Please browse my website to learn more about my research and publications. The Teaching tab also has links to several undergraduate syllabi and an articulation of my teaching philosophies.