Participants

Timothy Beatley

Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities, in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for the last twenty-five years. Much of Beatley’s work focuses on the subject of sustainable communities, and creative strategies by which cities and towns can fundamentally reduce their ecological footprints, while at the same time becoming more livable and equitable places.

Naila Mahmood

Naila Mahmood is a Karachi based visual artist and documentary photographer. Her work revolves around the complexities of urban spaces, human rights and research based social projects. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in USA, India, Dubai, Germany, England and Pakistan. She teaches Communication Design at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, Pakistan and is the Director of the Vasl Artists Association.

Andy Grieshop

Andy Grieshop is an Associate Professor of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at NC State. Griedhop is interested in sources and evolution of atmospheric aerosols, characterization of in-use emissions from mobile and stationary combustion sources, linkages between air pollution emissions and climate change, air pollution exposure assessment, technical policy analysis of the environmental impacts of energy systems, and energy and environment in developing countries. He is the faculty advisor for NCSU Chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) and a member of the Executive Committee of the Triangle Research Initiative on Household Energy Transitions (TRI-HET).

Raymond Guiteras

Raymond Guiteras is an Assistant Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at NC State. His research focuses on how households in developing countries act to protect themselves from environmental health risks, in particular through investments and behaviors related to water, sanitation and hygiene. His papers include studies of the effect of social interactions on investment in sanitation, the impact of micro-finance on investments in environmental health in Cambodia and Bangladesh, demand for clean water in Ghana, the impact of sanitation and clean water infrastructure on health in India, and the effect of disgust-based messaging on health behavior in Bangladesh.

Vivek Fellner

Vivek Fellner is an Associate Professor of Animal Science at NC State. His research interests include ruminal function, lipid metabolism, nutritional biochemistry, feed utilization, microbial physiology, and methane production.

Lalo de Almeida

Lalo de Almeida is a photographer for the New York Times and the Folha de S. Paulo . In 2012, Lalo won the XII Marc Ferrez Award from the National Arts Foundation (FUNARTE) to prepare a project concerning the social impacts caused by the construction of the hydro-electric power plant of Belo Monte in the Xingu river. This same photo essay also won the Fundação Conrado Wessel Award 2013, and the multimidia produced with these pictures and published by Folha de S. Paulo newspaper, won the Grande Prêmio Folha de Jornalismo, Grande Prêmio José de Alencar, WASH Media Awards in Sweden and the award of Excelencia Periodistica (Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa).

Nicolás Cuvi

Nicolás Cuvi is a researcher at the Anthropology, History and Humanities Department at the Latin American Social Sciences Institute (FLACSO-Ecuador). Cuvi’s research is concentrated on the history and epistemology of socio-environmental thinking, evolutionary thinking, biotechnology sociology, environmental history of the tropical Andes, urban ecology of Quito, political ecology and climate change. The reflections aim to build comprehensive approaches to the circulation of practices and scientific ideas and knowledge that are relevant to analyze the socio-environmental issue in the contemporary world.

Geeta Wahi Dua & Brijender Dua
Geeta Wahi Dua & Brijender Dua are a team of landscape architects and architects who are founder editors and publishers of LA: Journal of Landscape Architecture, a professional publication based on the subject in context of Indian subcontinent. Along with the journal, they also practice as independent researchers in the field. The mandate of the practice is to appreciate the meaning of the multidisciplinary subject of landscape architecture as stewardship of natural processes in the realm of space design.
Raju Vatsavai 

Raju Vatsavai is a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program Cluster Associate Professor in Geospatial Analytics in the Department of Computer Science, at NC State. He works at the intersection of spatial and temporal big data management, analytics, and high performance computing with applications in the national security, geospatial intelligence, natural resources, climate change, location-based services, and human terrain mapping. As the Associate Director of the Center for Geospatial Analytics (CGA), Raju plays a leadership role in the center’s strategic vision for spatial computing research.

Erik Wibbels

A Professor of Political Science at Duke University, Wibbels’ research focuses on development, decentralized governance, and other areas of political economy.  Current major projects include the combination of surveys and satellite images to identify slums in India and understand the conditions under which residents achieve formal recognition and successfully attract public services; an impact evaluation of a large, district-level USAID program in Ghana; and work on how the geographic emergence and spread of state authority impact long-term economic development.

Lise Sedrez

Lise Sedrez is an Associate Professor of History at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, and is currently the deputy coordinator of the Graduate Program on Social History at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. She has worked and published in the United States and Brazil, is the co-editor of the series Latin American Landscapes, by the University of Arizona Press, and was the chief-editor of the history journal Topoi, from 2011 to 2015. Lise’s research interests include urban environmental history, history of disasters and digital history. She has recently published on the history of environmentalism, Guanabara Bay, and floods in Rio de Janeiro e Buenos Aires.

David Gilmartin

David Gilmartin is a Professor of History at NC State. His David Gilmartin’s research interest focus on the intersections between the history of British imperialism in South Asia and the development of modern politics and forms of rule.   His most recent book, Blood and Water:  The Indus River Basin in Modern History (2015) examines the intersection between environmental and political history over the last 200 years.  Current research focuses on the legal history of India’s electoral institutions as they have evolved from its colonial past, and on the ways these institutions have reflected evolving visions of sovereignty.

Madhusudan Katti

Madhusudan Katti is an Associate Professor at NC State in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, and a core faculty member in the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program for Leadership for Public Science. He studies animals and plants in cities with the goal of applying understanding toward reconciling biodiversity conservation with human development. His research also focuses on the behavioral effects of humans on other species, e.g. effects of urban noise on birdsong. Katti is an evolutionary ecologist who led the multidisciplinary Urban Long-Term Research Area – Fresno And Clovis Ecosocial Study (ULTRA-FACES) project, studying the interactions between water policy, human water use, and urban biodiversity in California’s Central Valley, before moving to NC State in 2016. He is currently developing similar programs focusing on issues of urban ecology in the Raleigh / RTP area of North Carolina.

Robert Moog

Robert S. Moog is an Associate Professor of Political Science at NC State with a research focus on South Asian justice systems, environmental politics of South Asia, judicial selection  in the United States, and higher education in Turkey.

Duarte Morais

Duarte Morais is an Associate Professor at NC State in the department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, associated to the People-First Tourism Lab. His research focuses on sustainable community development through tourism.

Frederico Freitas

Frederico Freitas is an Assistant Professor at NC State in the History department.  His research focuses on the intersection between environment and society with a particular interest in the spatial and social implications of environmental policies.

Viney Aneja

Viney Aneja is a Professor in the Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University. Much of his work has focused on the science needed to make important decisions on environmental, sustainability, and climate policies in North Carolina and the nation.

Priya Shyamsundar

Priya Shyamsundar is the lead economist at The Nature Conservancy  with extensive experience in the field of environment and development economics. She is also the founder director of SANDEE, the South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics. SANDEE supports research and building the capacity on the economics of climate change, poverty & natural resources, and pollution management. Along with her work with SANDEE, Priya has also consulted for the World Bank, and worked as a technical advisor for the Program on Forests to help develop a framework on forests and poverty.

Erin Sills

Erin Sills is a Professor at NC State in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources. Her research interests include markets and payments for non-timber forest benefits, forest-based livelihoods and economic development,  deforestation and land use in the tropics, and impact evaluation of conservation policies.

Sandria B. Freitag

Sandria B. Freitag is a Teaching Associate Professor at NC State in the Department of History. Her current project deals with the first two ‘mass’-produced and -consumed forms of visual culture – posters and photography – and what they reveal about the intersection of everyday life with participation in the larger patterns of public life in modern India. Her new work focuses on NGOs, as another aspect of public life, especially those dealing with the SDGs and sustainability, as well as those working on social uplift and livelihood.

Kaberi Kar Gupta

Kaberi Kar Gupta is a Visiting Scientist at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. Kaberi is an ecologist trained in wildlife biology from the Wildlife Institute of India, and in Anthropology from Arizona State University. She studied the Slender Loris in the wilder forests of Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve for about a decade for her Ph.D. thesis research. Her current research draws upon her training in multiple disciplines to study the ecology of cities and other places where people live alongside wildlife.

Kalyani Raj

Kalyani Raj has worked on for over a decade with the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC), bringing the voices of grassroots women to the international level.

Angela Harris

Angela Harris is an Assistant Professor of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at NC State. Harris is a member of the Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WaSH) research cluster at NC State. Her research seeks to better characterize human exposure pathways of fecal contamination and to develop methods to interrupt pathogen transmission to protect human health. Harris is engaged in computational and laboratory investigations in addition to conducting field work in international locations (prior work includes projects in Tanzania, Kenya, and Bangladesh).