Please join us in celebrating Shreya Chaudhuri, a senior at UC Berkeley majoring in Geography and Environmental Science with minors in Global Poverty & Practice and Data Science, for two remarkable achievements.
Curator of Steeped in Time
Now on view at 120 Doe Library (South/Southeast Asia Library), Steeped in Time is a powerful exhibition curated by Shreya that traces the enduring legacy and evolving future of Assam tea. Drawing from her honors thesis research on Traditional Ecological Knowledge and colonial legacies in Assam’s tea industry—and rooted in her family’s six-generation legacy of tea farming in India—the exhibit explores the complex intersections of colonial enterprise, Indigenous stewardship, and neoliberal global trade. It also highlights how reviving traditional agriculture and agroforestry can help forge more just and sustainable futures.
Recipient of the Stronach Prize
We’re also thrilled to announce that Shreya has been awarded the prestigious Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize for her project: Equi-Tea: মাটিৰ মুক্তি, মানুহৰ মুক্তি / “liberation of the land is liberation of her people.” Through this award, Shreya will lead the creation of a farmer’s collective, establish an archive of Indigenous agroforestry, and launch a farmer-to-consumer tea brand—all to help heal the colonial scars left by the tea industry in Assam.
Shreya’s work bridges research, policy, education, and advocacy, centering Black and Brown communities and local knowledge systems. She leads Project Planet, a nonprofit for decolonial environmental education, founded the DeCal Decolonizing Environmentalism and the Decolonial Environmental Network on campus, and serves as a Climate Action Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Student Environmental Resource Center (check out the mini tea cafe she built at SERC!).