Dear All,

The Department of Environmental Studies cordially invites you to a Job Talk on Monday, February 24, 2025.

Time: 6:30 PM

Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/91817254637?pwd=k5Neb3AtqYLNhVWQaPqmbMVgFLs7x0.1

Title of the Talk: "Development Drops: Tracing Some Ways of Water in India’s Thirsty Capital Region"   

Abstract: Against a backdrop of environmental crisis, particularly in relation to cities in India and South Asia, where some of the most difficult environmental- and climate-related challenges are arising, my talk focuses on the National Capital Region of Delhi and its waters. In this presentation, I draw ethnographic and historical attention to how Delhi residents are coalescing drop-by-drop — by way of public enterprise or private initiative, and often by drawing on longstanding cultural traditions — towards making their contemporary thirst city a more water-sensitive one. What social forms and moral and cultural imperatives come together to animate and inspire individual and collective action towards public good and private welfare? What contradictions do such environmentally-oriented actions in the relatively prosperous city entail? This talk, thus, offers a glimpse into how NGOs and individuals, state and citizens, amongst other actors, are making and inspiring changes at different scales to the environment in which they live, in context of past and present challenges, in their quest for urban sustainability and socio-ecological well-being.

Speaker's Bio: Lav Kanoi is a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer at Yale University. He previously completed his PhD jointly in the Yale School of the Environment and the Department of Anthropology at Yale University. Kanoi’s research in environmental anthropology and the environmental humanities has appeared in various notable journals and in book collections such as Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability, The SAGE Handbook of the Social Sciences, and Environment and Society: Advances in Research among others. Kanoi is also a literary translator working between classical and contemporary Indian and European languages, and he mostly recently translated Kakuzo Okakura’s The Book of Tea from English into Hindi.

We look forward to your active participation.

Warm regards,

Environmental Studies Department