MANISHA ANANTHARAMAN

About

I am a multi-disciplinary scholar who combines critical theory, ethnographic methods and community-engagement to explore the potential for, pathways to, and politics of sustainability transitions. I study how economic and political ideologies, social identities, and power relations impact how "environmentalism" and "sustainability" are conceptualized and enacted at multiple scales - from the household, to the city, to the transnational milieu. I also explore how 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.

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 studies.

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.

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.

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.

Please browse my website to learn more about my research and publications on Cultural Politics of Sustainability, Circular Economy and Sustainable Consumption. The Teaching tab also has links to several undergraduate syllabi and an articulation of my teaching philosophy.