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Prakash Kashwan is a scholar of environmental policy and politics, with a specific focus on environmental justice, climate justice, and global climate governance. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and an Affiliated Faculty at the Heller School for Social Policy & Management at Brandeis University. Prior to joining Brandeis in the fall of 2022, he was a tenured Associate Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Research Program on Economic and Social Rights at the Human Rights Institute of University of Connecticut, Storrs. His research and teaching builds on his interdisciplinary educational background and a first career in international development.

Kashwan addresses questions about the intersecting pursuits of environmental protection, socioeconomic development, and radical climate action. Kashwan’s work is devoted to informing public debates and advancing public action needed to address the contemporary challenges of global environmental and climate crisis, socioeconomic inequality, and the failure of policymaking architecture structured in line with the dominant modes of economic governance. His research has been cited in national and international media, including the New York Times, Deutsche Welle, Huffington Post, the U.S. National Public Radio (NPR), Scientific American, and, Down to Earth. He has also contributed popular commentaries to the Washington Post, the Conversation, Al Jazeera, the Guardian, BBC Hindi, and Indian national English daily the Hindu, and a variety of news portals.


Kashwan  is the author of Democracy in the Woods: Environmental Conservation and Social Justice in India, Tanzania, and Mexico (Oxford University Press 2017), which has been reviewed extensively in scholarly journals and popular media. He is the Editor of Climate Justice in India (Cambridge University Press 2022), one of the Editors of the journal Environmental Politics (Taylor & Francis), and co-founder of Climate Justice Network (with Professor Lauren MacLean of Indiana University, Bloomington ). In this next book project Kashwan is developing a novel theory of governing for justice in the context of the ongoing efforts to advance socially just climate action in the United States.


Kashwan’s work is founded on this multi-, and inter-disciplinary academic training, which includes a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), a Master’s in Forestry Management), and a Ph. D. in Public Policy awarded under the tutelage of late Professor Elinor Ostrom, a political economist, who was the joint winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences. Kashwan’s research, teaching, and writings also benefit from his 25 years-long engagements with global and international environmental governance, including a pre-academia career in international development (1999-2005). Kashwan was a winner of a Young Scientist’s Research Award for 2009 from the International Foundation for Science (IFS), Stockholm. More recently, he was awarded the University of Connecticut’s Research Excellence Program award (2018), the Human Rights Institute’s Faculty Fellowship (2020), and the externally-adjudicated Faculty Fellowship (2021-22) at the UConn Humanities Institute.


Kashwan has been a member of the expert group convened by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) for the Scoping of the Assessment of Transformative Change and options for achieving the 2050 vision for biodiversity. He is a Senior Research Fellow of the Earth System Governance Project, a member of the advisory board of the European Research Council (ERC) funded project Conservation Data Justice (CONDJUST), and was a member of the Academic Working Group on International Governance of Climate Engineering convened by the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment, Washington D.C. Dr. Kashwan is a member of the editorial advisory boards of journals Earth Systems Governance and Progress in Development Studies. He seeks to serve the broader community of Environmental Studies researchers and scholars in his capacity as the Vice Chair of the Environmental Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA).