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MANISHA ANANTHARAMAN

About

I am a multi-disciplinary scholar who combines critical theory, ethnographic methods and community-engagement to explore the politics of  sustainability.

​I study how economic and political ideologies, socio-cultural identities, and power relations impact how "environmentalism" and "sustainability" are conceptualized and enacted at multiple scales and by diverse actors -   from the household, to the city, to the transnational milieu.   As a critical scholar, I pay specific attention to whether environmental initiatives   reinforce or dismantle different manifestations of race, class, gender and caste-based oppression, with a normative goal of advancing social justice within sustainability and decarbonization initiatives. 

Please browse my website to learn more about my research and publications on  Critical and Just Sustainabilities,   Circular Economy    and  Sustainable Wellbeing.    The   Teaching tab   also has links to several undergraduate syllabi and an articulation of my teaching philosophy.

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 I am an Associate Professor of   Justice, Community and Leadership  at Saint Mary's College of California in the Bay Area, where I teach courses on environmental justice, sustainability and development through the lenses of postcolonial/decolonial theory, feminist   geography and cultural sociology. 

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, and  was a visiting professorial fellow at the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester.   I serve as an Associate Editor for   Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene (UC Press)    and    Consumption and Society   (Bristol University Press).

Beyond research, I collaborate with community  organizations looking to transform spatial planning and consumption practices in cities through policy advocacy and institutional change.   ​I am an  Associate Fellow at Chatham House's Environment and  Society Program    and was a Commissioner on the   Cambridge Sustainability Commission report on Scaling Behavior Change. 

 In a time of exacerbating inequality, enduring poverty and widespread climate disruption, I firmly believe that we cannot talk about sustainability or decarbonization without a serious consideration of its intersections with social justice, equity and oppression. I take a situated, relational and intersectional approach in my research,  collaborating with scholars in critical geography, sociology, environmental science and policy studies, and with community organizations, policy-makers and practitioners.   
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