PhD Student Adarsh Kumar Shahi is a first-year Ph.D. student in Anthropology and Integrative Conservation (ICON) at the University of Georgia. He is interested in questions of Land and Forest rights, Protected Areas and Conservation, the ontology of loss and the entangled lives of humans, non-human and other-than-human entities. His research explores the lived experience of ecological loss, displacement, and resistance and reclamation practices among the Adivasi (indigenous) communities living in the state of Uttar Pradesh, in northern India. It examines land reclamation practices and yet-to-come resistant becomings as acts of creating alternative lifeways that contest state power and caste and its re/making at the margins. His research engages critically with the laws like the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006, not only as a legal tool but as a contested terrain that re-shapes social, ecological, and political relationships. He is particularly interested in understanding how labour, land, and life intersect in the production of alternative futures in the face of systemic loss and state violence. Research Research Areas: Cultural Anthropology Research Interests: Environmental Anthropology Land Rights Caste Protected Areas Conservation Ethnography Education Education: M.A.: Master's in Society and Culture, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar
