Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan

Dinakar Singh Prof of India & South Asia Studies; Professor of Anthropology and School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
203-432-3684
Areas of interest : 
Environmental History; Political Anthropology; Cultural Geography; Development Studies; and Science Studies
Region: 
South Asia

“Shivi” is Co-Director, Program in Agrarian Studies; and Chair, South Asian Studies Council, in the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. With Professor Michael Dove, he coordinates the combined PhD Program in Anthropology and Forestry & Environmental Studies. 

Sivaramakrishnan’s research interests span environmental history, political anthropology, cultural geography, development studies, and science studies. He has published widely in the leading journals of all these disciplines and inter-disciplinary fields, with a regional focus on south Asia, especially India.

Over the last fifteen years much of Sivaramakrishnan’s research program has dealt with the colonial and contemporary history and anthropology of forests and wildlife conservation in eastern India. Sivaramakrishnan is the author of several books and edited volumes (see left). His articles have been published in American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Development and Change, Environment and History, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Historical Sociology, Journal of Peasant Studies, and Social Anthropology, as well as other journals and edited collections.

Sivaramakrishnan is currently working on several projects including essays on India’s terrestrial environmental history, the comparative study of postcolonial nature conservation in the tropical world, urban ecology in metropolitan India, the anthropology of law and justice in India, and new research on law, civil society, and environmental sustainability in India, with case studies from the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

Sivaramakrishnan currently serves on the Editorial Boards of American Ethnologist, Conservation & Society and is a member of the Editorial Collective of the Journal of Peasant Studies. He edits the Culture, Place, and Nature Series at the University of Washington Press, which has published fifteen inter-disciplinary books, on environmental issues in different parts of the world, since 2005. Sivaramakrishnan served on the Board of Directors of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), from 2009 - 2013, and was the elected President of the AAS in 2010-11.