Chandana Anusha

I am trained as a sociocultural and environmental anthropologist. I am interested in South Asia's coastal environments where mega-infrastructure projects clash with agrarian ways of life in an era of climate change and global trade. For my doctoral work, I investigated how mega-port projects encounter lively coastal ecologies when geopolitical aspirations turn the Indian coastline into a new frontier of resource control. My book project follows a cast of human and nonhuman actors — fishers, farmers, goats, seafaring merchants, mangroves, port, and government officials — as their lives become enmeshed in mega-port development since the 1990s. This book makes a case for thinking connectively about oceanic, agrarian, and urban transformations. Equally, it reframes a coastal region, previously viewed as a marginal strip of land by sea, into an expansive meshwork of freshwater, seawater, sediment, and emotion. From the Western Indian coastline, it engages with enduring questions of what it means to survive and thrive amid economic and ecological uncertainty.

In my future research, I will trace the connections between Western India and Indian Ocean coasts as India expands its energy frontiers amid changing climates, racialized maritime histories, and growing international trade.

I was previously the Environment, Ethnicity, and Race postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University and a Mellon Fellow in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities at Princeton University.