As a scholar and educator, my goals are reflected in the exhilarating possibilities of the social sciences to expand the limits of understanding and imagination. The classroom is perhaps the most fulfilling space to realize this transformative promise. Above all, my aim is to produce not only rigorous scholars but enlightened and empathetic citizens of the world.

At the LSE, I co-teach undergraduate and postgraduate courses such as Introduction to Environmental Geography, Environment, Science and Society, and Politics of Environment and Development. At UCLA, I have served as an instructor for undergraduate seminars on Economic Anthropology, Anthropology of Water and Multispecies Anthropology. I have also worked as a Teaching Assistant and Fellow in Anthropology and Global Studies for courses such as introduction to socio-cultural anthropology, anthropology of food, globalization and culture, and cultures of capitalism.

COURSES TAUGHT

Environment, Science and Society

Course description: This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) which analyses connections between science, society, and politics. It will interrogate how social structures shape scientific knowledge, and vice-versa. Specifically, we will investigate how s Some of the questions we will explore in this course include: What makes a scientific fact? How are social values reflected in technical systems? What roles do/should scientists play in policy debates? Through this course, students will develop familiarity with key concepts and methods in STS through case studies of classic and recent scholarship in the field. In particular, we will focus on how an understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology can enable the development of more robust environmental policies. Students will develop the analytical skills to understand how values, power, and inequality shape the development of scientific facts and technical artifacts. Moreover, students will be encouraged to critically interrogate – that is, historicize and politicize - the ‘science-policy interface’ in order to better envision and enact just, equitable, and scientifically-sound environmental futures.

Economic Anthropology

Course description: The economy is often taken for granted as a self-evident, natural, and timeless domain separate from cultural and political spheres. A closer analysis reveals that economic life is shaped by, and in turn, shapes social worlds. This course asks students to think through economic life through culture – everyday lives, rituals, beliefs, actions, and politics. It will introduce students to the various ways in which what we call “the economy” is a site of political contestation, social inequality, and cultural meaning. Through a close reading of classic and contemporary texts, we will explore central concepts in anthropological thought such as gifts and commodities, production and consumption, under/development, property and dis/possession, and work and labor. Some of the specific questions this class explores include: What is “the economy”? Can everything have a price? Is money universal? Are we obligated to pay our debts? Is fair trade really ‘fair’? What are the alternatives to capitalism? Throughout this class, we will analyze theory in relation to practice – thinking through how an anthropological lens might offer unique insights into key economic questions of our time and how to address them.

Anthropology of Water: Nature, Culture and Power

Course description: We live in an age profoundly shaped by water, both as scarcity and excess. With melting glaciers, rising seas, thirsty cities, and contaminated pipes, water has come to occupy a prominent position in research and public policy agendas. Commentators predict the breakout of water wars, policy-makers plan for ‘day zero’ of water scarcity, and families worry about the safety of water flowing from their taps. Rather than viewing this grave issue as a matter for natural scientists alone, this course demonstrates the importance and relevance of an anthropological approach, with its attention to specificity, value, and meaning, as well as to relations of power and inequality. It urges a rethinking of concepts in mainstream environmental discourse such as ‘scarcity’, ‘disaster’, ‘Anthropocene’. It considers the ways in which the study of water provides novel insights into key social scientific concepts and themes, such as commodification, citizenship, development, and racial capitalism. Finally, it explores how an examination of water’s multiple meanings and valuations might offer alternative imaginaries of environmental futures.

Multispecies Anthropology

Course description: How is ‘the human’ formed and transformed by non-human life? What happens when species meet? Human culture, economy and politics cannot be understood in isolation from other species with which we interact, live, love, work, and kill. This course introduces students to multispecies anthropology, the study of interactions between human beings and non-human life forms – animals, plants, fungi, viruses. This course shows that these inter-species relationships offers new insights into classic anthropological questions of meaning, power, violence, and identity. We will study these themes through ethnographic case studies in fields and forests, laboratories and factories, and our own homes: from pig slaughterhouses in the Midwest to goat sacrifice rituals in the Himalayas, mushroom traders in Japan and influenza researchers in southern China, landmine-detecting rats in Tanzania and oil palm plantations in West Papua. The course maintains a focus on the enduring forms of inequality that shape and are shaped by relations across species. Throughout, we will consider how a multispecies approach might offer new ways of imagining and enacting environmental and social justice in the era of climate change.