Students

Roshni Kutty
Batch: 2015
PhD Title: Socio-institutional systems that influence varied implementation of collective forest rights in the Western Ghats of Karnataka
PhD Guide: Siddappa Setty R.

After my Masters degree in Botany,I devoted my energies towards the cause of environment, working with several NGOs. I cut my teeth with an environmental litigation activist group where I became acquainted with various environmental laws in India. Later, I worked part-time with an NGO that documented traditional agricultural knowledge of the Warli tribes. I have also worked with the fisher and farmer communities of coastal Maharashtra to challenge the kind of ‘development’ thrust on them. Shifting to Pune, I joined an advocacy group working on community-based conservation issues. Compelled again by family responsibilities, I left my profession in 2004. Armed with a B.ED degree, I began to teach Geography for middle school students in 2011-14. I returned to research in 2015 through the PhD programme at ATREE. My thesis examines the implementation of collective forest rights under India’s Forest Rights Act, 2006 in the Western Ghats of Karnataka.