DAKSHIN - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Chairman of Ethics Committee
- Trustee
- ( HREC, Chair )
- Strategic Communications
Aarthi Sridhar is a founder trustee of Dakshin Foundation and heads its Communities and Resource Governance Programme. Trained in the social sciences, her research interests cover a range of historical and contemporary socio-legal studies, with a focus on regulating resource use, environmental justice and democratic practices. She has also facilitated the creation of some of India's first collaborative experiments for coastal and marine environmental governance. She has researched and produced documentary films on fisheries, photo-essays field manuals and other learning material on environmental subjects. Her partial identities over the years as activist, researcher and doctoral student has been instructive of the place of order and chaos in inspiring ‘good' environmental engagement. She wishes it upon everyone.
Job Titles:
- Member of Ethics Committee
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He is the author of two books of non-fiction, a collection of essays and ten novels. His books have won many prizes and he holds four honorary doctorates. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages and he has served on the Jury of the Locarno and Venice film festivals. In 2018 he became the first English-language writer to receive India's highest literary honor, the Jnanpith Award. His most recent publication is Jungle Nama, an adaptation of a legend from the Sundarban, with artwork by Salman Toor.
Job Titles:
- Junior Communications Officer
Aradhana Seth is a filmmaker, production designer, visual artist and producer.
She art directed the films The Darjeeling Limited, London Has Fallen and The Bourne Supremacy. As an artist she has had solo shows at Gallery Chemould, Mumbai and Sunapranta, Goa. Her work has been exhibited with Andrea Anastasio at Istituto Italiano de Cultura, New Delhi, and at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in Viennam Grosvenor Gallery, London, Vadehra Art Gallery and Khoj, New Delhi and Clark House, Mumbai.
Her production design credits include The Sky is Pink, The Sweet Requiem, The Hungry, Angry Indian Goddesses, Vara, West is West, Don, One Night with the King, Admissions, Easy, The Guru (India), Leela, Everybory says "I'm Fine"!, Karvaan, Earth and Fire.
She has directed/Produced over 18 documentary films including DAM/AGE, A film with Arundhati Roy and Omnibus on Vikram Seth.
Most recently she produced A Suitable Boy, a six part series for BBC, airing on Netflix.
Aroon Raman was educated at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the University of Pennsylvania.
After successfully divesting his advanced materials companies to multinationals, Aroon now engages actively in both the for-profit and non-profit space-as a member of various corporate boards and charitable trusts. He is especially interested in appropriate technology issues. He also a thriller writer with three national bestsellers to his credit.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Professor and Head
Prof. Derek Johnson is Professor and Head in the Department of Anthropology, the University of Manitoba. Derek's broad research focus is the political ecology of small-scale fisheries governance. Two current areas of interest are intersections between political ecology and social wellbeing and the social economy of dried fish in South and Southeast Asia. He has a long-standing research interest in the marine fisheries of Gujarat State, India, but has collaborated with others on research elsewhere in South Asia and in other parts of the globe.
Derek Johnson, Tim Acott, Natasha Stacey, and Julie Urquhart. (2018). Conclusion: Reflections on social wellbeing and the values of small-scale fisheries. In Social wellbeing and the values of small-scale fisheries, eds. Tim Acott, Derek Johnson, Natasha Stacey, and Julie Urquhart. Dordrecht: Springer.
Derek Johnson, Rajib Biswal, and Jyothis Sathyapalan. (2018). History and social difference in arguments for the societal values of small-scale fisheries in Gujarat, India. In Social wellbeing and the values of small-scale fisheries, eds. Derek Johnson, Tim Acott, Natasha Stacey, and Julie Urquhart. Dordrecht: Springer.
Derek Johnson. (2018). The values of small-scale fisheries. In Social wellbeing and the values of small-scale fisheries, eds. Derek Johnson, Tim G. Acott, Natasha Stacey, and Julie Urquhart. Springer.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Public Health Physician
- Sana Contractor
Abhijit is a public health physician with over thirty years' experience in working on reproductive health, human rights, and health governance as well as gender, men, and masculinities at the national and global level. He has been one of the global pioneers in devising successful approaches for involving men for gender equality and for social accountability in health. He has been active in building bottom-up knowledge creation and a co-founder of the global community of practice MenEngage Global Alliance and COPASAH.
He is currently Managing Trustee, Centre for Health and Social Justice, in New Delhi and Clinical Associate Professor, University of Washington, Seattle, USA. He serves as Advisor to various research centres and policy making bodies in India and across the world.
Das A (2013). How do we know we are making a difference? Challenges before the
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Dr. Ajith Kumar was Faculty at the Wildlife Institute of India and Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, and was the Director of the Masters Program in Wildlife Biology and Conservation at the National Centre for Biological Sciences from 2003 to 2020. He is presently an Affiliate Scientist at the Centre for Wildlife Studies, Bangalore He began his wildlife career with a survey of primates in South India in the late 1970s. His doctorate, from Cambridge University, was on the ecology and population dynamics of the lion-tailed macaque. This study introduced him to the tropical rainforest in the Western Ghats, where he and his students later studied herpetofauna, small carnivores, rodents and arboreal mammals for the next many years, especially in the context of habitat fragmentation. Sikkim Himalaya has been another area of interest to him, where he and his colleagues have studied mammals, herpetofauna and birds. His research interests include rainforest ecology, primates and small carnivores
Job Titles:
- Chairman of Ethics Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of Ethics Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of Ethics Committee
Job Titles:
- Professor at the Centre for Ecological Studies
Profile: Dr. R. Sukumar is a Professor at the Centre for Ecological Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He is also the Managing Trustee, Asian Nature Conservation Foundation and a Project Leader, Wildlife Trust Alliance, New York. His areas of interest are wildlife ecology (Asian elephant ecology and management; population dynamics; wildlife-human conflicts), tropical forest ecology (diversity, structure and dynamics of tropical forests), and climate change (reconstructing Quaternary climate change; assessing impacts of future climate change on forests and biodiversity).
Ghosal, R., Sukumar, R. and Seshagiri, P.B. (2010). Prediction of estrus cyclicity in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) through estimation of fecal progesterone metabolite: development of an enzyme-linked immuno-sorbent assay. Theriogenology 73: 1051-1060.
Job Titles:
- Member of Ethics Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of Ethics Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of Ethics Committee
- Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore
Job Titles:
- Retired Principal Scientist and Head of the Molluscan Fisheries Division at the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute
Profile: Dr. Sunil K. Mohamed is a Retired Principal Scientist and Head of the molluscan fisheries division at the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi. He received a PhD from the Cochin University of Science and Technology for his work on crustacean physiology. Apart from his extensive contribution to Indian cephalopod biology and population dynamics, he has also made significant contributions to the growth of commercial bivalve mariculture in the country. His interests in marine ecological modelling particularly its application to fisheries management has lead to many significant contributions to fisheries management in India.
In a career spanning over 35 years, Jagdeesh has focussed on the conservation of natural resources, the interrelated issues of poverty and environmental degradation, and on systems thinking at the interface of ecology, society, and economy. He was part of the founding team of the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) and served as its first Chief Executive from 2001 till July 2020. Under his leadership, FES was awarded the Times of India Social Impact Award (Environment category, 2012), Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom Award on Commons (Best practitioner, 2013), United Nation's Land for Life award (2013), Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2015) and HCL Foundation's Best NGO award (Environment category, 2016).
He then transitioned his role within FES to an Anchor and Curator. As a Curator, he worked towards influencing policy, advancing knowledge exchange and building a larger constituency for the Promise of Commons initiative. He has been working with national and international organizations on drawing policies around land rights and providing individual ownership to communities. After stepping down from FES in 2021, he joined the Omidyar Network, India as an entrepreneur in residence.
He is a Skoll awardee for social entrepreneurship (2015), a Henry Arnhold (Mulago) Conservation Fellow (2017) and a Senior Ashoka Fellow (2021).
Profile: Over the last eleven years with Dakshin, Marianne's work has been focused around issues of coastal governance and fisher rights. She works with fishing communities and civil society networks to increase their engagement with law and policy, from influencing new legislation or amendments to improving implementation of current legislations. Currently as Director, Marianne steers Dakshin's efforts towards building inclusive governance models that ensure sustainable use of natural resources as well as improve the social and economic wellbeing of fishing communities.
Meera holds a doctoral degree in life sciences from the University of Technology, Sydney. At Dakshin Foundation, Meera contributes to institutional growth by coordinating research activities,and institutional development of the Andaman Nicobar Environment Team (ANET). Her current academic work focuses on incorporating insights from multiple disciplines to understand conflicts in natural resource governance and conservation. This includes the dynamics of human-wildlife conflict in forest fringe landscapes of the southern Western Ghats as well as similar situations in islands and marine systems. Meera's expertise lies in applying heuristics, satisficing approaches and elements of bounded rationality to understand complex, uncertain systems involving multiple interacting components. Her current work also focuses on research at the interface of environmental history, anthropology and ecology, and their interactions in the context of traditional practices and species such as elephants and wild pigs.
Job Titles:
- Communications Consultant
- Marketing and Communications Manager
Profile: Namrata is a marketing and communications manager based out of Mumbai, India and she has worked with an eclectic mix of corporates and start-ups in the past. Inspired by the gap in conservation-specific communication in India and nudged by her childhood dream of working for wildlife, she now work part-time with Dakshin Foundation as a communications consultant and full-time with a sustainable condiment brand called Arugula&Co. She has also co-founded an edu-blog called ‘A Little More Conservation‘ with the aim bridging the gap in conservation specific communication, spreading more awareness about India's biodiversity and connecting the larger audience to conservation efforts in India.
Qualifications: Master's in Marketing and Strategy, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Bachelor's in Mass Media with a specialization in Advertising
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Co - Director of the Sheffield Institute for International Development
Dan is co-Director of the Sheffield Institute for International Development (SIID), at the University of Sheffield. He has worked previously at the Universities of Manchester, Oxford and Cambridge. With work experience in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India, he has worked extensively in Tanzania on livelihood change, natural resource governance, microfinance and institutional performance.
His Interests
Ponte, S. and Brockington, D. 2020. From pyramid to pointed egg? A 20-year perspective on poverty, prosperity, and rural transformation in Tanzania. African Affairs 119 (475): 203-223. doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adaa002
Aggarwal, A. and Brockington, D. 2020. Reducing or creating poverty? Analyzing livelihood impacts of forest carbon projects with evidence from India. Land Use Policy 95: 104608 doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104608
Pritchard, R. and Brockington, D. 2019. Forests: regrow with locals' participation. Nature 569: 630. Nature correspondence has a restricted number of signatories. This derived from a process involving 14 co-authors: Adams, B., Agarwal, B., Agrawal, A., Corbera, E., Duffy, R.V., Oldekop, J., Symons, K., Asiyanbi, A., Collins, Y.A., Krauss, J., Bukhi, M.M., Fletcher, R., Büscher, B. Chhatre, A.
Banks, N., Brockington, D. Maitrot, M. and Hulme, D. 2019. Interrogating Microfinance Performance beyond Products, Clients and the Environment. Insights from the work of BRAC in Tanzania. European Journal of Development Research 31(3): 339-363
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Professor
Profile: Professor Heather Goodall is Professor Emerita, History in the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, UTS and formerly co-editor of the journal Conservation and Society. Heather specialises in Australian Indigenous history, in environmental history and in intercolonial studies, in particular on the links between Australia, south Asia and the eastern Indian Ocean. Her research has drawn on oral history and archival methods to investigate relationships between people and their environments. Her recent work has included partnerships with the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage to research the role of cultural diversity in shaping interactions with rivers and public space in urban areas and with the Murray Darling Basin Authority to research local fishing people's knowledge of changes in rivers and in riverine species in inland south eastern Australia. Her ARC-funded research projects have included the exploration of relations between India, Indonesia and Australia (resulting in Beyond Borders, 2018) and between South Asian and Australian women's movements during the twentieth century (Countering the Cold War, forthcoming). Her most recent book, Georges River Blues: Swamps, Mangroves and Resident Action, 1945-1980, has returned to the history of environmental activism on Sydney's urban rivers.
Goodall, H (2013), ‘Geographies of Memory: environmental history and spatial power'. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, Occasional Papers Series. http://www.nehrumemorial.org/history-society-series.php
Profile: Professor Janki Andharia is currently the Dean of the School of Disaster Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai and has over 34 years of experience in the field of community organization and social development. Her areas of work focus on gender issues, environmental concerns, democratic governance, addressing diverse forms of marginalization and vulnerability. At the World Education Congress Global Awards for Excellence in Education, Leadership and Teaching on 23rd July 2015 held in Mumbai, Prof. Andharia received an award for her outstanding contribution to education.
Over the years Professor Andharia has conducted research, trainings and consultancy assignments for governments, industry and NGOs and international agencies. She has traveled abroad to several countries to deliver special lectures, establish institutional linkages with Universities and also on research collaborations. She has published extensively and is now the series editor for Springer's new book series on Disaster Studies and Management. Professor Andharia serves on the Board of several organizations.
She has been involved in national and state level policy making work and has had a long association with grassroots organisations. She was awarded the Association of Commonwealth Universities Scholarship to pursue her Ph.D from School of Environment Sciences, University of East Anglia U.K. in the area of Gender, Development and Environment.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Marine Science at the University of Western Australia
Prof. Jessica Meeuwig is a Professor of marine science at the University of Western Australia and co-founder of Blue Abacus. Her particular interest is the "big blue" open ocean pelagic habitats of sharks, tunas and other ocean wildlife. She pioneered the development of mid-water video-based methods that allow non-lethal sampling of ocean wildlife, an approach that is now being adopted globally. Jessica has also focused her research on the outcomes of marine protected areas, particularly those in the pelagic environment. Her research has taken her around the world with significant time spent in the Philippines, Vietnam and the central Indian Ocean. Jessica's research approach is empirical and predictive sensu her mentor Rob Peters (author of A Critique for Ecology).
Profile: Professor Mark Hamann works with James Cook University. His research group focuses on two main themes; Biology and conservation of threatened marine and freshwater species - in particular marine and freshwater turtles, animal tracking, human dimensions and Understanding impacts of plastic pollution and other human-based threats on marine systems. His areas of interest are Marine wildlife biology and management, Plastic pollution impacts & solutions and Protected area management.
Profile: Raghavendra is a highly organised and dedicated individual with a passion for developing a career in the field of accounting. Holding a graduate degree in Commerce, he is particularly interested in admin and accounts management. With more than 15 years of experience in the development sector, Raghavendra has worked in the areas of accounts and administration. Prior to joining Dakshin, he was associated with ATREE for 9 years and the Mahatma Gandhi Training Institute for Renewable Energy and Development for about 10 years. Outside of work, he enjoys watching cricket, listening to devotional songs, and loves cooking a variety of dishes.
Romulus Whitaker was born in New York City in 1943 and came to India in 1951 with his mother Doris and step-father Rama, son of Kamaladevi and Harindranath Chattopadhyaya. Rom set up India's first reptile park, the Madras Snake Park in 1969 outside of Chennai city. In 1971 it shifted to Guindy Deer Park in the city and had over 10 lakhs visitors. In 1976 Rom and his former wife Zai Whitaker set up the Madras Crocodile Bank/Centre for Herpetology, now India's largest reptile conservation, research and education center.
Saji Kumar, K K and Sasikumar, Geetha and Venkatesan, V and Vidya, R and Alloycious, P S and Jestin Joy, K M and Karamathulla, S P and Nataraja, G D and Mohamed, K S (2020) Distribution, age and growth of the diamondback squid, Thysanoteuthis rhombus (Cephalopoda: Thysanoteuthidae) from the tropical Arabian Sea. Fisheries Research, 224. pp. 1-9.
Venkatesan, V and Saji Kumar, K K and Alloycious, P S and Jestin Joy, K M and Mohamed, K S (2020) Rare observation of scar-bearing cuttlebone in a wild-caught Sepia pharaonis (Cephalopoda: Sepiidae) from southeastern Arabian Sea. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of India, 62 (1). pp. 123-126.
Saji Kumar, K K and Sasikumar, Geetha and Mohan, Gishnu and Kripa, V and Alloycious, P S and Mohamed, K S (2019) Age and growth of the little Indian squid, Loliolus hardwickei (Gray, 1849) in the Arabian Sea. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom. pp. 1-5.
Job Titles:
- Finance Manager
- Accounting and Regulatory Compliance Teams in Both Indian and International NGOs. He Is Familiar With Various FCRA Requirements, Audits and Statutory Compliances
T.R. Gopi has 25 years of finance and accounting experience in the non-profit and for-profit sector, with exposure to best practices and accounting standards and have led Finance,
Zai Whitaker grew up in a family of naturalists, which ignited her interest in conservation at an early age. With ex-husband Rom Whitaker she helped start and develop several organisations and projects, including the Irula Women's Society and the Madras Crocodile Bank/Centre for Herpetology, where she lives and works. Her other interest is education; she taught at the Kodaikanal International School for 18 years, and has been Principal of two schools. Zai writes for children on the environment and is the author of twenty books including Andamans Boy, Kali and the Rat Snake, Cobra in my Kitchen and Salim Mamoo and Me.