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Institute for Global Sustainable Development

Dr Hita Unnikrishnan

Assistant Professor, Institute for Global Sustainable Development

 Hita.Unnikrishnan@warwick.ac.uk

  R2.13, Ramphal Building, School of Cross-Faculty Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL

Office hours: Mondays: 12:45-13:45pm (in person); Fridays: 10:00am - 11:00am (via Teams)

Book a time slot to meet with me here

Biography

Dr. Hita Unnikrishnan is an Assistant Professor at The Institute for Global Sustainable DevelopmentLink opens in a new window, The University of Warwick. She is also an affiliate at the Urban InstituteLink opens in a new window, The University of Sheffield, a visiting faculty at Azim Premji UniversityLink opens in a new window,India; a senior fellow at Blue Range LabsLink opens in a new window, and an external affiliate of the Ostrom WorkshopLink opens in a new window, Indiana University. She is also one of the subject editors for the journal Ecology and Society. Previously she was a Research Associate and Newton International Fellow (British Academy) at the Urban Institute, Sheffield and a researcher at Azim Premji University, India. She has been one of the founding members of, and has (co)led the Early Career Network of the International Association for the Study of the Commons Link opens in a new window(IASC-ECN) from 2021-2024, and has been associated with various urban collectives including The Nature of Cities Link opens in a new windowand development organisations such as the UN Habitat and the World Bank. She is also an academic podcaster with the In Common PodcastLink opens in a new window. Her research takes three distinctive themes which coalesce around environmental governance, social justice, and environmental change and she welcomes collaborations/PhD students whose interests lie broadly around any of the themes mentioned below:

a) Trajectories: Hita's work highlights the importance of understanding the influence of development trajectories on geophysical, political, and cultural transformations of social ecological systems, particularly as they relate to the multiple contested ways in which urban ecological resources are perceived and appropriated in cities of the global south. She focuses particularly on urban water and energy systems and their evolution through time, as well as the imaginaries surrounding their transformation and its implications on historical and contemporary forms of marginalisation within the current climate crisis.

b) Sustainability Policy and Environmental Governance: particularly in the context of urban environmental commons and using a diversity of theoretical underpinnings most notably Ostromian institutional analysis perspectives, urban political ecology, public health discourses, and resilience.

c) Community and co-production: Developing nuanced perspectives around community centric approaches of managing urban social ecological systems. Her research has examined the historically heterogeneous and exclusionary nature of communities even within exemplars of "egalitarian" community led practices of water management and the plurality of ways in which the term co-production is employed in diverse sectors such as forestry, water, and energy along with their implications for inclusivity and justice. Her research further demonstrates the lack of clarity on what constitutes a community across policy, academia, and praxis, leading to massive implications for inclusive and just energy transitions.

Hita Unnikrishnan has over 12 years of experience in conducting research with particular focus on urban blue and green commons in India and on energy issues in Africa using multiple perspectives such as those emerging from social ecological systems, urban political ecology, resilience, intersectionality, and environmental history. Hita’s research interests lie in the interface of urban ecology, systems thinking, resilience, urban environmental history, public health discourses, and urban political ecology as it relates to the evolution, governance, and management of common pool resources in cities of the global south. A biologist by training and having transitioned into the environmental social sciences, she further draws on a range of qualitative and quantitative methods in her research including historical GIS, field ecology, textual analysis (of historical and other documents), semi structured and oral history interviews, and participatory approaches. She received her PhD in 2017 from Manipal University (in association with Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment), India. Her doctoral thesis explored the specific vulnerabilities of the social ecological system represented by urban lake commons in the south Indian megapolis of Bengaluru. Thereafter she undertook a postdoctoral position at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, followed by a British Academy funded Newton International Fellowship held at The Urban Institute, The University of Sheffield. Prior to joining IGSD as an Assistant Professor, she worked as a Research Associate on the GCRF funded project Community Energy and Sustainable Energy Transitions in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Mozambique (CESET), also at The Urban Institute, The University of Sheffield.