Faculty and Guests
Guest
Dr. Ashish Kr. Shrivastava
District Magistrate, Dehra Dun and CEO of Dehradun Smart City Ltd., he is an Indian Administrative Service officer with a doctorate in Botany. Amongst other sensitive positions, he has been Vice-Chairman of Mussoorie-Dehradun Development Authority and Additional Secretary to the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand.
Faculty
Abhai Mishra
A space scientist by profession, he has long lived in the valley and studies its Geology and Water Systems. He is also co-founder of Been There Doon That and has authored books on Philately.
Anubha Kakroo
An Architect and Industrial Design professional, she has another Masters in Design Management from Brunel University, England, U.K. She has taught at School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi and has been the Dean at DIT University, Dehradun. Currently she is a Professor and Director at Anant National University.
Prof. Dr. Anuradha Chaturvedi
Head of Department for Architectural Conservation at the School of Planning and Architecture, new Delhi, she has undertaken a number of studies on Dehradun and Mussoorie, and the Himalayas. She has experience of working in conservation in various parts of India and abroad and has number of publications to her credit you want.
Eric Schwabach
A scientific associate with the University of Tübingen, his research interests include South Asia and the Himalayas. His research is focused on ethnology of religion.
Dr. Jeanne Feaux de la Croix
A social anthropologist and leader of a junior research group on Environment and Society in Central Asia at the University of Tübingen, Germany.
Together with Dr. Mohira Suyarkulova, she leads the Volkswagen Foundation research project on the 'social life' of the Naryn and Syr Darya rivers. After completing her PhD at St. Andrews University (Scotland) on moral geographies in Kyrgyzstan in 2010, she held a number of research fellowships at the Centre of the Modern Orient in Berlin. Her research interests include water and energy issues, land rights, age relations and resilient ways of living in Central Asia. Féaux also supports regional outreach and academic freedom initiaties with the Central Eurasian Studies Society.
Prof. Dr. Karin Polit
A doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Heidelberg, she has worked for several years in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand. Currently the head of department of Anthropology at the Asien-Orient Institut, University of Tübingen, she has several books and research papers to her credit.
Dr. Lokesh Ohri
A doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, he has worked on the rituals and culture of the Himalayan communities. Founder of the walking group Been There Doon That, he engaged with public outreach to ensure better understanding of diverse cultures. He has several publications to his credit and has also established a research centre in Dehra Dun, called Humanities Himalaya. He is an independent director with the Dehradun Smart City projectdd the content you want.
Ass.-Prof. Dr. Sanderien Verstappen
An Junior Professor in Visual Anthropology at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Vienna, Her long-term research interests include mobility and migration, development and social inequality, marginalization and displacement, and the politics of (in)visibility. As a visual anthropologist trained in ethnographic filmmaking, she uses film as a research method and medium of publishing while also developing multimodal approaches in both teaching and research..
Sargam Mehra
Sargam Mehra is a Doctoral Fellow at Doon University researching on heritage communication in the Doon Valley. She graduated in history from the University of Delhi and holds a masters in history and a masters in communication studies. She is the co-founder of the citizen’s initiative Been There Doon That which does weekly heritage walks and works with several village communities in the Western Himalayan region. She has previously worked as a sub-editor with the United News of India, New Delhi and subsequently as an Assistant Professor at Doon University. She has been a research assistant with INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage with keen interest in history and heritage.
Dr. Soumya Prasad
An applied ecologist, working in Himalayan ecosystems, these days her work is centered around communicating science to people, to enable behavior shifts towards more sustainable lifestyles. Her research has focused on addressing impacts of plastic waste on animals, climate change for plant communities, and charcterizing plant- animal interaction networks in tropical forests. She has a doctorate from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and has taught at the Jawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Tanvi V Deshpande
A Marie Curie PhD fellow with the department of Political Science, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. Her PhD focuses on urban climate governance in Indian cities. Tanvi’s research interests include cities, climate change, water, and governance.