Dr. Nimisha Thakur

Biography

Nimisha Thakur is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on climate change, state-making, and environmental ethics in South Asia. Her dissertation examines agrarian communities living along the River Brahmaputra in the Eastern Himalayan region of Northeast India, and how they articulate ecological ethics and negotiate equitable environmental governance in an era of climate change. By integrating approaches from political and environmental anthropology, she focuses on the conceptions of environmental justice that develop alongside historical struggles for land rights and sovereignty. Her research has been supported by prestigious organizations such as the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation, and the National Science Foundation, reflecting her commitment to humanistic and public-facing scholarship. Her work has appeared in the journal Anthropology and Humanism, as well as in SAPIENS, an anthropology magazine, and in a Springer book volume. Nimisha envisions her classroom as a space for collaborative knowledge formation. She completed her PhD in Anthropology at Syracuse University and is beginning work on her book project, “Fluid Lives: Property, Precarity, Ethics in the Eastern Himalayas,” which focuses on local knowledge and ecological ethics that shape claims for equitable land rights and environmental governance in the northeastern region of India.

Research Interests