Vinay Sankar is a social scientist interested in Political Ecology and Pluralist Economics. He uses a mixed-methods approach to understand the commodification of commons like water, food and forests. After his PhD in the ‘Political Ecology of Small Freshwater Bodies in Central Kerala’ from BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, he was briefly with Christ University, Bangalore, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics. Before switching to academia, he worked in the development sector for four years, associated with the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), Anand, and Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR), Pune.
Vinay was recently awarded, along with Sachin Tiwale, the ATREE Early Career Research Grant for the project titled “New Age Hydro-Agricultural Regime (NAHAR): Understanding Wastewater Governance and the Impact of Wastewater Irrigation on the Environment and Society”.
Vinay coordinates the core course Economics for Environment and Development for the MSc and PhD programs at ATREE. Additionally, he contributes to courses on Research Methodology, Introduction to Climate Change, and Practicing Interdisciplinary Research on the Environment (C3).
Currently, he is advising a PhD scholar, Meera M., on her thesis and an MSc student, Vinhu V., on her master’s dissertation.
Sharad engages actively in contributing his interdisciplinary environmental knowledge to the policy sphere by serving on various local, state and national committees/task forces.
Ongoing engagements:
Past engagements: