Environment

Alpa Shah

Associate Professor in Anthropology

Dr Shah's research and writing focuses on poor and marginalised people in India and Nepal. She explores the processes of inequality people get caught in and the various ways in which they try to subvert them. She has lived for several years as an anthropologist amidst the people she writes about. Her first book, In the Shadows of the State, was on the indigenous rights and politics of Adivasis in Jharkhand, India. Shah is currently writing a book on India’s Naxalite or Maoist movement, a more than 40-year-old insurgency trying to seize power of the state to create a communist society. She has presented some of this research on BBC Radio 4. Shah is also leading the Programme of Research on Inequality and Poverty, funded by major research grants from the ESRC and the EU. She read Geography at Cambridge, trained in Anthropology at the LSE, and taught anthropology at Goldsmiths until 2013 when she returned to the LSE.

Laura Bear

Associate Professor in Anthropology

Dr Bear is a specialist on India and ethnographies of the economy, state, time, urban ecology and globalisation. She has researched the history of the Indian railways, showing their influence on the formation of contemporary Indian nationalism, and new forms of labour among international call centre workers in Kolkata. Dr Bear has recently completed a two-year ESRC-funded research project carrying out fieldwork with boatmen, shipyard workers, hydrographers, port bureaucrats and river pilots on the river Hooghly in Kolkata. This work tracks the changes in the socio-nature, religious practices and livelihoods on the river that are emerging in the wake of liberalisation attempts, and the effects speculative processes of planning the future have on urban environments.

Ruth Kattumuri

Co-Director of the India Observatory

Dr Ruth Kattumuri's research focuses on sustainable growth and inclusion, including climate change policies in India. Her recent publications examine the evolution of India’s climate change strategies, social protection policies, food security and the Public Distribution System, inclusive education, and corporate philanthropy.

Richard Burdett

Professor of Urban Studies and Director of LSE Cities

Ricky Burdett is Professor of Urban Studies and director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age programme. His research focuses on the interactions between the physical and social worlds in the contemporary city and how urbanisation affects social and environmental sustainability. He oversaw ‘Urban India: Understanding the Maximum City’, Urban Age’s examination of the social, economic and physical contours of the four largest metropolitan regions in India. 

Philipp Rode

Executive Director, LSE Cities

Philipp Rode is Executive Director of LSE Cities and Senior Research Fellow at LSE. As researcher and consultant he manages interdisciplinary projects comprising urban governance, transport, city planning and urban design.  The focus of his current work is on cities and climate change. He has previously researched on governing urban transport and spatial development in India and written on Mumbai’s compact urban form and transport efficiency as a model for a sustainable transport.

Robin Burgess

Professor of Economics and Director of the International Growth Centre

Professor Burgess' areas of research interest include development economics, public economics, political economy and labour economics. His research focuses on identifying policy and institutional reforms which are capable of delivering higher growth and lower poverty in developing countries. His current research examines the cost of international disintegration by studying the economic and trade effects of Partition on modern-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. He has previously published on the unequal effects of liberalisation, government responsiveness, social banking, poverty, and the implications of climate change in India. He has consulted extensively for the World Bank and the Indian Government

Peter Howlett 

Senior Lecturer in Economic History

Dr Howlett is Senior Lecturer in Economic History and his research interests include the British economy in the First and Second World Wars, labour markets in the railway industry, economic growth and convergence, and distribution dynamics. His research on knowledge transfers includes a case study on how technical facts travel in Tamil Nadu, India.

Tirthankar Roy 

Professor of Economic History 

Professor Roy focuses on the contribution of the artisan and traditional forms of useful knowledge in the making of the modern Indian economy. He has published books on the economic history of early modern India and India’s historic role in the world economy as well as a recent paper on Indian industrialisation. Dr Roy’s work on the sources of economic change in modern India suggests a more varied outcome of colonialism and globalisation on the economy of the region than is usually considered. His ongoing work connects India with debates in global history, and involves a study of standards of living, law, guild, states, and science and technology in a comparative frame.

Giles Atkinson

Professor of Environmental Policy 

Dr Atkinson’s research interests cover a number of aspects of environmental policy and appraisal. He has published extensively on the subject of sustainable development. Much of this research has examined how policymakers might construct better measures of economic progress through 'green accounting', particularly comprehensive measures of (genuine) saving. An additional component of his research is the application of cost-benefit analysis particularly stated preference methods to appraise environmental (and related) policies. He is on the advisory board of the Green Indian States Trust (GIST).

Jennifer Baka

Associate Professor of Geography and Environment

Dr Baka’s research critically examines the politics of energy policy. Her particular focus is to both analyse the micro-politics of policy formation and to evaluate the social and environmental impacts resulting on the ground. For her dissertation, Dr Baka developed an interdisciplinary framework combining political and industrial ecology to examine the concept of 'wastelands' as it relates to India's biofuel programme.

Richard Perkins

Reader in Environmental Geography

Dr Perkins’s research interests include innovation diffusion and convergence, economic globalisation and environmental change, and environmental compliance and policy implementation. He has studied corporate environmentalism in India and published a comparative analysis of firms in three sectors—automobiles, steel, and power—of the Indian economy that are ‘greening’ in response to processes of international political engagement, market integration, and transnational social communication.

Kira Matus

Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Management

Dr Matus’ area of expertise is the development and application of innovative technology to address sustainable development. This includes exploring the potential of green chemistry as a so-called leapfrog technology in India, China, and the United States. Dr Matus is also involved in research on voluntary regulation and emerging institutional arrangements that promote sustainable development, especially the role of standards and certification in the development of more sustainable, "green" products and technologies in the global supply chain.

Nicholas Stern

IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government

Professor Lord Stern is IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, Chair of the Grantham Institute, and Director of LSE’s India Observatory. He was appointed President of the British Academy in July 2013. Professor Lord Stern’s research and publications have focused on the economics of climate change, economic development and growth, economic theory, tax reform, public policy and the role of the state and economies in transition. His recent work on India analyses economic development in the Indian village of Palanpur and documents the growing importance and influence of the nonfarm sector in the rural economy between the early 1980s and late 2000s.

Timothy Dyson

Professor of Population Studies

Professor Dyson’s research interests include demographic transition, urbanization, migration, famines, world food prospects, HIV/AIDS, and the impact of demographic change on democratisation. He has published extensively on the past, present and future demography of the Indian subcontinent. With Robert Cassen and Leela Visaria, he was the editor of Twenty-first Century India: Population, Economy, Human Development, and the Environment, Oxford University Press, 2005.

Tim Forsyth

Professor of Environment and Development

Professor Forsyth specialises in political approaches to environmental change and international development. His research focuses on two key themes: The politics and governance of science and expertise within policy processes, especially for highly contested problems occurring in rapidly developing societies such as India; and the development of deliberative, multi-stakeholder forms of governance that can result in more development-friendly and environmentally effective policy solutions. Prof. Forsyth is currently conducting research on environmental and climate change policy, civil society and governance in several East Asian countries as well as India.

Gautam Appa

Emeritus Professor of Operational Research

Professor Appa is Emeritus Professor of Operational Research in the Department of Management. His research focuses on linear programming, the environmental impacts of large dams, integer programming, and data envelopment analysis. He has also studied the causes and effects of communal strife in India.