Manisha ANANTHARAMAN
BIOGRAPHIE
Manisha Anantharaman’s research examines how economic and political ideologies, socio-cultural identities, and inequalities affect how ecological transitions are conceptualized and enacted at multiple scales: from the household to the city to the transnational milieu. Applying ethnographic and community-engaged methodologies, she studies everyday sustainability practices and political mobilizations in relation to each other. As a critical scholar, she pays specific attention to how “environmental” initiatives—be it municipal recycling schemes, green space development, or global circular economy transition plans—reinforce or contest intersectional manifestations of race, class, gender, and caste-based inequality.
Her publications include a co-edited volume “The Circular Economy and the Global South” (Routledge, UK, 2019), and a book "Recycling Class: The contradictions of inclusion in urban sustainability” (MIT Press, 2024).
Her current research projects include a US National Science Foundation and Belmont Forum funded project studying Digitalization and Sustainable Consumption and a collaborative project on pro-poor circular economies. Beyond research, Manisha Anantharaman is an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House’s Environment and Society Program, through which she serves as an expert consultant for organizations such as the UN Environment Program.
- Link to her personal website : https://www.manishaanantharaman.com/
- Read her interview
PUBLICATIONS
Anantharaman, M (2024) Recycling Class: The Contradictions of Inclusion in Urban Sustainability, MIT Press.
Schroeder, P., Anantharaman, M., Anggraeni, K., Foxon, T., eds. (2019) The Circular Economy and the Global South: Sustainable Lifestyles and Green Industrial Development. Routledge UK.
Anantharaman, M., Sahakian, M., Saloma, C. (2023). Spatializing degrowth in Southern cities: Everyday park-making for (un)commoning, Urban Studies.60(7), 1266–1284
Anantharaman, M. (2022). Is it sustainable consumption or performative environmentalism? Consumption and Society, 1(1), 120-143.
Anantharaman, M. (2021) “Reclaiming the circular economy: informal work and grassroots power” Oxford Handbook on Comparative Environmental Politics, eds. Jeannie Sowers, Stacy Vandeveer, and Erika Weinthal, Oxford University Press UK.
HONORS, AWARDS AND GRANTS
2023-25 Future Earth Belmont Forum and US National Science Foundation grant, Digital infrastructure for sustainable consumption: Reorganizing food and mobility consumption, PI
2023 Outstanding Scholar Award, Saint Mary’s College of California
2021 Pandemic Pedagogic Excellence Award, Saint Mary’s College of California
2021 Commissioner, Cambridge Sustainability Commission on Scaling Sustainable Behavior Change
2019 Sustainable Consumption Institute Professorial Fellow, University of Manchester
2019 Alba Viotto Invited Professorship, Institute for Sociological Research, University of Geneva
2018-20 Swiss Network for International Studies, Green public spaces and sustainable cities in South and Southeast Asia: Integrating needs and societal wellbeing, co-PI
2016 Early Career Scholar Award, Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI)
2014 Berkeley Connect Fellowship, UC Berkeley
EDUCATION
2023 HDR Recycling Class: the Contradictions of Inclusion in Urban Sustainability, Sciences Po
2015 Ph.D., University of California Berkeley Environmental Science, Policy & Management
2008 M.Sc., University of Oxford (Distinction), Biology
2007 B.Sc., University of Madras (Honors), Plant Biology
